


In Love with the Moment

by Anogete



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Meeting the Parents, Morning Cuddles, Morning Sex, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Romance, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-03-17 13:31:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 73,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18966238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anogete/pseuds/Anogete
Summary: Jane and Darcy have been recruited to help support and rebuild the science side of the Avengers after the events of Endgame.  Darcy can't believe her luck when the hottest guy around offers to help her with the luggage as they arrive.  She's not exactly sure what his deal is, and he doesn't exactly seem willing to share, though.  Eventually discovering his secret doesn't stop her from inviting him to come along to her parents' house as her fake boyfriend. Bucky can't seem to stay away from the pretty brunette with the big eyes, not even when spending time with her means meeting her parents before he's even kissed her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It feels like it has been a long minute, guys. In fact, it's been months since I've posted a fic. If you follow me on Tumblr/Instagram (same name--anogete), then you may know the reason for the hiatus. For those who don't know, I took the last three months of the year off to focus on work. At the beginning of the year, I bought my very first house, which took up a great deal of my free time. Just as I closed on the house, I received news that my grandmother was terminally ill. She passed away less than a month later. It broke my heart and I couldn't do much of anything for weeks. In an attempt to figure out how to enjoy life again, I went to see Endgame on the day it opened. After watching it, I came home, opened a file, and started writing this fic. After all the heartache in my life and in Endgame, I needed something fluffy and romantic and sweet. Maybe that's what you need, too. If so, this is for you.
> 
> As with all of my stuff, the fic is complete. I'll be posting a chapter each day as I make my final edits. If you start this journey with me, I promise you'll see a completed fic. What can you expect on the ride? Seventeen chapters and just over 70,000 words. Rated E eventually, but a very slow burn for sure. Character-focused with virtually no action. A ton of Darcy and Bucky with some smatterings of Darcy interacting with Sam, Bruce, Wanda, and (of course) Jane. Maybe even a couple moments between Bucky and Sam, too. Fluffy with a side of angst. A Bucky that has learned to forgive himself and is ready to move on, but isn't quite sure where to begin until he sees the pretty girl in the first chapter. Fake-dating during a weekend visit with Darcy's family. Awkward flirting and playing with Bucky's hair. Snippets of lyrics from my personal playlist of songs that inspired some of the writing. Lots of fun, promise. The chapters will switch points of view--you'll get two with Darcy, one with Bucky, and then repeat.
> 
> In this fic, Bucky's identity as a HYDRA assassin is known, but the details of everything he was responsible for is still classified. After the events of Civil War, the official story from Steve and T'Challa was that Bucky died in Siberia. You'll also see pretty early on that another official story is that Steve died during the fight with Thanos. I'm not changing canon. I'll address that little item later in the fic when Bucky feels comfortable enough to talk to Darcy about Steve. Just bear with me for a moment until we can get there. I promise I didn't kill Steve; he's happily living his best life in that alternate universe, but that can't exactly be broadcast on the morning news.
> 
> Thank you [Bulmaveg Otaku](http://bulmavegotaku.tumblr.com/) and [chocolategate](https://chocolategate.tumblr.com/) for being wonderful betas, nudging me in the right directions, and fixing my mistakes. <3
> 
> My birthday is tomorrow (May 27th), so if you want to give me a little bday present then a comment letting me know what you think would be the absolute best. Constructive criticism or general comments can be emailed to me at anogete527@yahoo.com.
> 
> I hope you are all well. If you missed me, then know that I missed you just as much. I hope you enjoy this little offering. I'll see you tomorrow with another chapter of Wintershock goodness.

> _”Caught me at the right time, baby. I was at the edge, I was at the end. Made me feel like there is life worth living. Made me feel alive, turn me on my side.” - Summer Walker (CPR)_

There was a spot on the top of her forearm, about three inches past her elbow, that itched. Darcy could think of nothing else. Well, nothing else until the plane dipped and her stomach dropped. It reminded her of that roller coaster her dad had insisted she ride with him when she was twelve years old. “Wouldn’t that be some shit if we died because of turbulence?” she muttered.

The question went unanswered because Jane’s nose was five inches from the screen of a tablet as she scanned an email sent to her by an old colleague. It had been a difficult few weeks. Darcy was closer to throwing in the towel than she’d ever been, even with all the craziness that had happened.

“My arm itches,” she said. Jane didn’t respond to that either.

Darcy rubbed the plaster of the cast covering her forearm. It didn’t help with the itch; nothing did. If only she hadn’t been navigating the stairs to retrieve coffee for Jane when she’d vanished then she wouldn’t be in this predicament with a broken arm and a boss turned friend turned… whatever. Darcy wasn’t sure if Jane had ever been her friend. It felt more and more like a one-way street nowadays and maybe it always had been. Maybe she’d been willfully blind, too stupid or too desperate to live vicariously through Jane. Jane’s world revolved around science and a quest for knowledge. There wasn’t energy to spare for Darcy. She couldn’t blame Jane for it. Jane hadn’t changed. Darcy had just pulled off her rose-colored glasses.

“How’d you do it?”

She looked up to see a woman not much older than her looking down at the cast. The woman had a scarf around her neck and was pushing the beverage cart down the narrow aisle of the plane. “I fell down a flight of stairs,” Darcy said, giving her a tight smile.

It earned her a sympathetic one in return. “From the reappearance?”

Darcy nodded. “Yep. If only I had been lying in bed, right?”

“I’m just glad I wasn’t working that day. I was home.”

“Oh. Oh, didn’t think of that. Yeah, that was good for you. It sure would suck falling from six miles up in the air.”

The woman smiled again. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Vodka and soda?”

“Your friend?”

She looked over at Jane before turning back to the flight attendant. “Same as me. I’ll take them both.”

 

* * *

 

Jane’s bag was half-packed and she was on the phone with someone who spoke fluent Science. The only part of the discussion Darcy had caught was that they were leaving for upstate New York soon. They’d just arrived in New York City yesterday. Darcy hadn’t seen her parents since the incident because she and Jane had been trapped in Iceland for over four weeks while the world figured out how to adjust. Everything looked strange, like they were living in one of those disaster documentaries where nature had started creeping into the cities and taking over abandoned areas that were no longer inhabited.

Darcy waved at Jane and mouthed, “My parents.” She used two fingers to mime someone walking and whispered, “We were going to see my parents.”

Jane frowned and swiped her hand through the air before walking over to the window of the hotel room they were sharing. It was a clear dismissal. Darcy didn’t make the decisions in this relationship. She got the snacks and arranged the transportation and made sure Jane didn’t forget her fucking head when she walked out of a room, but Darcy didn’t make the decisions. God, her arm itched so much it hurt. She unsuccessfully attempted to shove the complimentary pen provided by the hotel underneath the edge of the cast to ease the irritation.

“We need to go to Albany,” Jane said after disconnecting with whoever had been on the line.

“Jane, we were going to see my parents in Maine. They’ve been on my ass and you said you would run interference for me since they are determined to undermine my life choices,” Darcy replied, trying to keep her voice calm.

Jane shook her head. “Change of plans. They successfully traveled through time.”

“They who?”

“The Avengers.”

Darcy raised her brows. “Thor? Is he okay?”

“I don’t know, Darcy. But _time travel_. We have to go. Dr. Henry Pym is there.”

“Is this about seeing Thor? Jane, you can’t string him along. I think you really hurt him when you said—”

“Darcy, this isn’t about Thor. This is about a chance to see technology we’ve only dreamed about.”

“You. Technology _you’ve_ only dreamed about.”

“The applications—”

“Jane, we lost five years. _Five years_. It’s been a month. Give science a rest for just a little bit. Please.”

Jane exhaled sharply before turning away to grab a messy stack of papers on the table by the window. “I’m going to Albany. Go see your parents.”

“Are you serious?”

Jane shrugged and turned away. “I’ll do this by myself, Darcy.”

“You’re pissed at me right now, aren’t you?”

“This is important,” Jane replied, her hair flipping as she abruptly turned back around.

“I thought the world was saved. We have time, right? Why do we have to run off to Albany this very second?”

“Look, you’ll get your paycheck either way. Do what you want,” Jane snapped.

“Jane, give me a fucking break. Okay? I’m trying really hard to be your friend here.”

“I’m going to Albany.”

Darcy sighed. “What’s in Albany? I thought the training facility they had there was wiped off the map.”

“They have a satellite facility about twenty-five miles northwest they used for SHIELD when it was still active. They’ve been operating out of it, according to Dr. Banner.”

“And what?” Darcy asked. “We just show up and tell them we’re there to check out their shit?”

Jane widened her eyes and gave Darcy a look that very clearly indicated Jane thought the question she’d just posed was ridiculous.

“Right. Sure. Okay. We’ll just show up and crash the party. Why not?” She paused. “Are you sure this isn’t about Thor?”

Jane stopped her haphazard packing and looked back up at Darcy. “Do you think he’ll be there?”

Just barely stopping her eyes from rolling back into her head, Darcy said, “Maybe. Saving the world is kind of his thing, right? Did it just now occur to you that your ex might be there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Unbelievable,” Darcy muttered. “Un-fucking-believable. I thought you were being a brat because you wanted to see him, but you’re being a brat because you have a one-track mind for scientific discoveries. This is why you don’t have any friends.”

“Shut up and pack,” Jane said, her voice sharp, brooking no argument.

 

* * *

 

Darcy was carsick because she’d spent the three-hour ride browsing job listings online. There wasn’t much available for a thirty-something former grad student with no small amount of student loan debt and a resume that included buying Pop-Tarts and helping Jane save the world a couple of times a few years back. What was her title anyway? Personal assistant? No, personal assistant to a preeminent and world-renowned astrophysicist. Yeah, she decided. That would look better on a resume.

The thought of settling down and living somewhere for years seemed stifling, but trailing behind Jane Foster like she was some kind of stupid balloon tied to Jane’s wrist was beginning to wear on Darcy. What about Bruce Banner? Maybe he was at the Avengers’ facility. Maybe he was looking for a helper. Maybe he would give her vacation days without making her feel guilty for having a fucking life outside of Science with a capital S.

“We’re here,” Jane said as she pulled into a circular drive in front of a blocky brick structure. There were no signs to announce to the world that this was home base for the Earth’s best defensive team, but advertising that sort of thing was probably frowned upon. It was at the end of a quarter mile road surrounded by trees, so they definitely wanted privacy.

“Do you think Thor is okay? I mean, the news reported that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers died, but…”

“Where do you think the lab is?” Jane asked, cutting off Darcy’s question.

Darcy widened her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know, but I get the feeling you’re going to find out.”

“Can you bring the equipment in?” Jane asked as she opened her car door. Before Darcy could answer, Jane was off and away, climbing the three steps to the main entrance.

“Sure,” Darcy mumbled, pushing herself out of the passenger seat. Her arm was itching again, but she tried to ignore it. The doctor had told her the cast needed to stay on for at least six weeks, possibly eight. It had been almost five. She’d never wished away time as much as she was wishing away the next three weeks. Her parents were in Maine. Maybe she could commandeer the ugly Jeep Cherokee they’d rented and drive up there for a long weekend while Jane wrapped herself up in research on time and space. Did she want to? No. But she knew she should.

The two suitcases and the five large metal cases with sensitive instruments in them were stowed in the back of the Jeep. Darcy looked at them and then down at the bright red cast on her arm. She’d have to take them in one at a time since there was no handy dandy luggage cart available. What a bitch.

“Stupid,” she muttered under her breath. “I have to pee. My arm is killing me. When did it get so hot?” Lifting her hair up with her good arm, Darcy flipped it around in an attempt to dry the beads of sweat gathering at the nape of her neck.

Gathering her hair up into a knot in the hand with the cast, she used her other to fan the back of her neck. The breeze she’d created felt good against her skin. “Okay, one at a time,” she whispered, reaching in to grab her suitcase. It held pretty much her entire life at the moment, so she struggled to slide the heavy bag from between Jane’s luggage and one of the smaller metal cases.

“Can I help you?”

Darcy gasped and turned to see who had been stealthy enough to sneak up on her. She wasn’t expecting the long-haired, male model who was standing behind, though. He was head to toe in some sort of black tactical suit that fit him like a glove. She stepped back and dragged her eyes up to his face. “Uh, hi,” she said dumbly.

He smiled and Darcy suddenly felt like maybe it was about ten degrees warmer. Mystery guy lifted a hand up to shade his eyes from the sun. “Hi,” he said. “Can I help you with the bags?”

“Oh. Oh! Yes, help with the bags,” she said, looking at them piled in the back of the Jeep before returning her gaze to possibly the most gorgeous man she’d seen since Thor fell out of the sky. And Thor was a god. Was this guy a god, too? He looked like one and you never knew when you were dealing with someone who worked with the Avengers. He could be a soldier who missed his calling as an underwear model or some Asgardian beefcake with impeccable manners. “Help with the bags. That’s… nice. Yes. Thank you.” Darcy stuck her arms out like she was on The Price is Right and her job was to display the merchandise. “The bags,” she added with a nervous smile.

The corners of his eyes crinkled up as he grinned and stepped closer. Darcy moved back to give him space and to avoid the temptation to reach out and grab his bicep or his thigh or his ass. He lifted her suitcase and Jane’s out of the Jeep with what appeared to be absolutely no effort before he reached in for two of the metal cases.

“Are you from Asgard?” Darcy blurted out.

He stopped what he was doing and glanced over his shoulder at her. “Asgard? Like where Thor is from?”

“Yeah.”

He chuckled softly. “No. I’m from Brooklyn.”

“You kinda look like you’re from Asgard.”

The man turned to face her and looked down at his own body, no doubt following her gaze. “Do I?”

“Yeah. They’re all kinda ridiculously hot, sooooo…”

She watched his eyebrows lift. “So?”

“So, uh, please ignore everything coming out of my mouth, hot dude. Proceed with the bags and… shit.”

This earned her another chuckle. “Do you know Thor?” he asked.

“I do. Is he here? Is he okay?” Darcy rubbed at the cast on her arm, but it did nothing for that damn inch just below the elbow. “God, I suck at being a good friend. I should have asked you about him before now. Jane is a bad influence. Don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me that. I haven’t seen him for years, but he’s one of the coolest dudes I know and I—”

“He’s fine,” the man said with a nod before he turned back to the Jeep. “He’s not here, though. He left about three weeks ago on a... well, on a spaceship.”

“Huh. He used to travel on a magical rainbow space-bridge. I don’t know if a ship is a step up or a step down from that.” Darcy paused before saying, “Like a legit spaceship? For real?”

“For real,” the man agreed as he pulled the last two cases out of the vehicle.

“That’s interesting,” she said. Darcy wasn’t sure if she was responding to Thor’s spaceship or the fact that this guy just stacked and lifted three cases on top of one another and was balancing them on his left arm as he bent over and grabbed the handles of the other two metal cases in his right hand.

“I’ll be back for those two bags if you’ll wait here with them. Where should I put these?”

“Umm, are you sure you aren’t related to Thor or something?”

He looked at her with brows drawn down before exhaling a sharp breath of laughter from his nose. “Oh, because I can lift these? I, uh, work out.”

“Yeah, you do,” Darcy agreed before pressing her lips together to stop more words from coming out of her mouth. “I’ll, uh, I can… I can get these. They, uh, roll.” She pulled the telescoping handles of her and Jane’s suitcases up. “See?”

“Where to?” he asked.

Darcy inhaled a big breath of air. “Well, I don’t really know. I work for Jane Foster. She’s an astrophysicist and has a hard-on for Dr. Pym. We heard he’s here and that there were some time travel shenanigans, so we dropped everything to drive from the City. Honestly, I don’t even know if we’re allowed to be here, but Jane is super smart and Thor’s ex-girlfriend so she has that going for her. I don’t know if it is good or bad that Thor isn’t here. Aren’t those cases getting heavy?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said, flashing her some teeth with his smile. It made her stomach flutter.

“Darcy, come on!” Jane’s voice cut through the moment. She was standing in the doorway.

Darcy looked at her savior and grimaced. “That’s Jane. She’s usually not such a bitch. She’s just excited.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he agreed. “I’ll follow you.”

“And I’ll follow her, I guess,” Darcy replied as she walked around him to drag the suitcases up the three steps, hoping he wasn’t staring at her ass. These were old leggings that didn’t really do much to lift her booty. Not that anything was going to happen with sex-on-legs behind her, but it seemed wrong to not put her best ass forward when he had such a perfect one.

 

* * *

 

Darcy absently pressed her thumb into the button on the top of the pen, extending and retracting the tip again and again. “Who do you think the guy who carried our equipment in was?”

“Who?” Jane asked.

“Seriously? The hottest guy since your ex-boyfriend. The one who carried all of your shit into this room. Who do you think he is?”

Jane shrugged and plugged her portable drive into the computer on the desk. “I have no idea. Security, maybe?”

The lab was small but mostly empty. Pym was next door having a disagreement with some hot dad named Scott Lang. The walls were thin enough that Darcy could hear their voices, but not the words being said. “How’d you swindle your way into a lab and housing for us within, like, fifteen minutes of arriving?”

“Bruce Banner.”

Darcy stopped clicking the pen. “He’s here?”

“Mmm,” Jane replied noncommittally.

“I heard he was all… green and Hulky.”

“He is.”

“So, how does that look?”

“Strange, but… we’ve seen stranger things.”

Darcy nodded. “True. True. Do you think he’d take a pic with me?” When Jane didn’t reply, Darcy said, “How does he fit through these regular size doors? I saw a picture of him online yesterday. Do you think he has to have his glasses custom made?”

“Yes, I do have to have them custom made.”

The deep voice in the doorway made Darcy jump out of her chair. “Oh. _Oh_. Hi. You’re, uh…”

“Bruce,” the large green-skinned man said as he turned sideways and bowed his head to get through the door of the lab.

“Obviously. I like the new look.”

He smiled. “Thanks.” Bruce tugged at his dress shirt. “New shirt. Custom made, too.”

“Nice. My compliments to your seamstress.” Darcy sat back down and turned away from Bruce, cringing at the steady stream of stupid shit that seemed to fall out of her mouth when she was around enhanced people.

“Is the lab okay, Dr. Foster?”

“Jane,” Darcy heard her boss say. “And it’s fine. I’d love to talk to Dr. Pym about these particles that allow him to enter the quantum realm. And I’d love to pick your brain as well.”

“Sure, sure.” After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat and said, “With Tony gone, we’re trying to build a team of STEM experts dedicated to backing up the Avengers.”

“Are there still… Avengers?” Darcy asked, turning her chair around to look at Bruce.

He gave her a tight smile. “Well, we’re working on it.”

“I’d love to be involved,” Jane assured him.

Bruce nodded. “Good. Great. This place is temporary. We’re working on rebuilding the training facility, but it’s going to take a while.”

“Oh, she’s not picky over where she works. I think she forgets where she is half the time,” Darcy told Bruce.

“You’re Darcy, right?” he asked.

Her eyes widened. “What? How do you know me?”

Smiling, he said, “Thor told me about you.”

“Oh, that I’m a spaz?”

“That you are a fierce warrior with a gun capable of shooting lightning,” Bruce replied with a smile playing on his lips.

“Yeah, that’s called a Taser.”

“I assumed as much. It’s nice to meet you, Darcy.”

“Likewise, big guy.” Darcy slapped her hand over her mouth before taking it off and saying, “Sorry. Sorry. Was that… Was that insensitive?”

This earned her a chuckle. “No. You’re fine. You’re not the first to call me big guy. I’ll take it as a compliment. You’ve each been assigned a room upstairs on the fourth floor.” He laid key cards on Jane’s desk. “Make sure you stop at the front desk and register your fingerprints for the entry pads. Welcome to the team.”

“Do we get vacation days?” Darcy asked when he turned to exit the room.

“Uh… huh. I don’t know. I would say ask personnel, but I don’t think we have that either.”

“Boy, this really is a fly-by-night operation, big guy.”

“You have no idea, Darcy.” With that said, he maneuvered his bulk out the door and closed it behind himself.

“Sooooo,” Darcy said, dragging out the word as she watched Jane organize her notes. “Thor was here, but he left on a spaceship a few weeks ago.”

“A spaceship?” Jane said, looking up from her work.

“Yes. And your ex is on it.”

“Do you think it will be back?”

Darcy narrowed her eyes at Jane. “Are you asking because you do or don’t want to see Thor or are you asking because you got a little science erection when I said spaceship?”

Jane lifted her chin and sniffed. “Can’t it be both?”

“Oh my god, dude. Really? I’m starving. Do you want something to eat?”

“Where did the ship come from? Who is piloting it? Why did he leave with them?”

“Don’t know. Food, Jane. _Food_. Do you want any?”

“Whatever. Does Bruce know about the ship? Who told you this?”

“Hottie with a body who carried our shit in here. Do you think he lives here, too? God, I could use some eye candy.”

“He seemed like he was ex-military. How does he know about the spaceship?”

Darcy leaned forward. “Yeah, I got the military vibes, too. He’s not in any kind of uniform, though. The security guards I saw when we walked in were in uniforms. Maybe he’s some kind of sexy boss around here.”

“He carried our bags in, Darcy.”

“Right. Probably not a shot-caller. Or he’s like a humble, down-to-earth boss who helps women in distress. God, that’s even hotter.”

“Darcy,” Jane said in an admonishing tone.

“Stop raining on my parade. What do you want to eat? Did you see any snack machines in the hall?”


	2. Chapter 2

> _”I hate the feeling of this weight upon my shoulders, pushing the pressure down on me.” - Meg Myers (Numb)_

Nick Fury was like your disapproving father who doesn’t agree with any of your life choices and thinks you’re a disappointment. It was intimidating. So when he walked through the door of Jane’s lab with Dr. Pym the next day, she slipped out and went in search of something to stress eat. She’d just bought two candy bars from a vending machine in the lobby when her phone started vibrating in her pocket.

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath when she realized it was her mother calling. Darcy shoved both candy bars in a pocket of her cardigan and sat down on a bench along the wall before she answered. “Hey, mom.”

“Darcy, I thought you were coming home this week. Where are you at?”

“I’m in Albany, mom. I told you something came up. I’m sorry.”

“We haven’t seen you in ages. Your father said—”

“Mom, please. I’m trying, okay? It’s just… work is crazy right now,” Darcy replied, bending over and resting her forearms on her knees with the phone sandwiched between her shoulder and ear. “Please cut me a break.”

“We just don’t see why you can’t settle down and get a real job.”

“I have a real job.”

“Darcy, that’s an internship.”

She could feel her jaw tightening as they slid into an all-too-familiar conversation. “It is _not_ an internship and hasn’t been for years. I get a paycheck and it’s a career. We’ve already discussed this.”

Her mother sighed. “You’re just bouncing from country to country with this woman. It’s like you’re a fugitive. Darcy Abigail Lewis, you’re not running from the law, are you?”

“Are you serious right now? No. _No._ ”

After an extended moment of silence, her mother said, “Your father could use some help, you know. His receptionist is leaving to have her baby and you could fill in while she’s away. Maybe get your insurance license while you’re there. You could take over the business.”

“I don’t want to sell insurance, mom.”

“We just think it’s time for you to—”

“Look, I’ve got to go. I’m gonna visit soon. I promise. Maybe in a couple of weeks when I get this cast off.”

“Darcy, we really think you should consid—”

“ _Mom_ , I really have to go. Love you. Talk to you soon.” She disconnected before her mother could get in another word and stared at the floor between her favorite red Converse sneakers.

The reflection of the fluorescent light above suddenly disappeared and the toes of black boots appeared in her view. Darcy lifted herself up into a seated position on the bench, pushing her shoulders back like she wasn't feeling beaten up and stupid. Her visitor was the hot guy from the day before.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice sounded like a frog’s croak.

“Hi,” he said, tilting to his head to the right. “You okay?”

She forced a smile and waved her phone in the air. “Yep. Never better. Parents, right? So frustrating. Do yours nag you as much as mine nag me?”

“Mine passed away a long time ago.”

“Oh, fuck. Sorry.” Darcy pressed her lips together and winced. “Also sorry for the fuck. I mean, the cursing. Profanity, I use it a lot. Like, all the time. Oh my god, I cannot shut my mouth. This is like a disaster in slow motion.”

The man standing in front of her laughed softly and shook his head. “You’re fine. I know my way around some profanity.”

“I’m Darcy, by the way. I don’t think I told you that.” Darcy stuck out her right hand and watched as he took it in his much larger one. She felt his fingers wrap around her hand and the cast that extended down to her knuckles. His skin was warm and dry; his grip was firm as he lifted and lowered their hands twice before releasing her.

“Nice to meet you.” After a brief hesitation, he said, “My name is... Bucky.”

“That’s an interesting name,” she said, looking up at him from her spot on the bench. “Kinda unusual.”

His brows furrowed and he shifted around as if her question made him uncomfortable. “Is it?”

“Yeah, what’s it short for?”

His mouth opened and then closed. She watched as he glanced down the hall and then returned his gaze to her. “It’s just Bucky.”

“Okay, okay. Cool. I can get with that. What do you do around here, Bucky?”

“Whatever they tell me to, I guess.”

So, not a boss, Darcy thought. But not exactly one of the guards on duty since he looked like he had the run of the place. Maybe he was a kinda-sorta enhanced something or other like Bruce or that intense lady Darcy had seen out in the yard that morning lifting a truck in the air with her mind and glowing red hands. “Same, dude. Same.” She leaned back against the wall and pulled out the two candy bars. “Want a snack?”

“Aren’t you working?” he asked, looking from the candy bars to her face.

“Uh, the guy with the eyepatch and the scowl is in the lab so I’m hiding here until he leaves. My mom’s already made me feel like shit once today; I don’t need the disapproving glare from his singular eyeball to make me feel like shit again.”

Bucky gave her that enigmatic smile and sat down on the bench beside her. He left a good foot and a half of space between them. Darcy was glad because he was way too hot to sit any closer. She was weak-willed and desperate and he was embarrassingly out of her league. “He does have that scowl down to an art, doesn’t he?” Bucky asked, leaning back against the wall.

She passed over one of the candy bars and unwrapped hers. “That he does. You been here long?”

He unwrapped the candy while she watched. “Not long,” he said.

“Were you here these past few years or… gone?”

“Gone,” he said. “You?”

“Gone,” she confirmed. “I still can’t get over how I lost five years. Crazy.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Seems like the world just gets crazier.”

“I know, right? A few years back I was running away from dark elves and now I disappear for five years only to come back and hear that some crazy purple dude from outer space tried to destroy the planet.”

They sat in silence and ate half their candy bars. Darcy kept sneaking glances over at him and his perfect hair and that undoubtedly perfect jawline under the scruffy beard that made him look just a little dangerous.

Finally, she said, “How’d you end up here?”

Bucky shrugged. “Figured I could help put things back together. I don’t have any other place to be.”

“Okay, vague, but I’ll accept it.”

“I’m not that interesting. Just here to help where I can.”

“I guess that’s what I’m here for, too.” She finished her candy bar as he watched her. His gaze made Darcy want to fidget in her seat.

He held out his left hand. It took her a long moment to realize he was asking her for the empty wrapper because she was too busy wondering why the skin on his hand looked so smooth. His right hand certainly felt different than what she could see of his left. She placed the trash in his palm and watched him close his fingers around it. “It was nice to meet you, Darcy,” Bucky said before pushing himself to his feet. “Thanks for the candy.”

“Pleasure is all mine,” she said. Truer words were never spoken. The pleasure really was all hers.

He just shook his head and gave her that smile before turning to walk down the hall. She watched his ass the entire way. It was a very good ass. On par with Captain America’s ass, in fact. The thought made her remember that Cap had a friend named Bucky back in the day. He’d been declared dead after an incident in Siberia. Her life was just full of strange coincidences.

 

* * *

 

She’d just taken one of the fleet vehicles—a black sedan—into town to buy groceries for herself and Jane. Since they’d arrived, Jane was hell-bent on nothing but work, which made for a lonely existence. She didn’t know anyone else at the facility and everyone there seemed so busy. Too busy to waste time with Jane Foster’s assistant. So, Darcy milked the trip to the grocery store, spending two hours roaming the aisles until she finally returned back to the building they were living and working, bags filled with decidedly poor choices for two adult women. It wasn’t like she had a chef’s kitchen in her studio apartment on the fourth floor, though. Plus, Jane wasn’t exactly interested in fine dining. So, sandwiches, chips, and Pop-Tarts it was.

Bucky was walking out the side door of the building when she pulled into a parking spot just to the left. Part of her wanted him to notice that she was sitting in the idling car, but another part of her hoped he’d keep walking. After a week of being snapped at and ignored by Jane and nagged by her mother, Darcy was in no shape to weather any kind of attention from all that hotness. She watched from the corner of her vision as he did a double take and stopped mid-stride.

“Okay, okay, okay. Don’t be a fucking spaz, Darcy,” she muttered under her breath as she opened the car door. “Hey,” she said, forcing a smile as he approached.

“Haven’t seen you around for a few days,” he said.

“Oh, just… you know, working,” she said, pressing her hip and thigh into the car and crossing her arms. “Really important stuff.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Force-feeding a single-minded Jane Foster and trying to convince my mother that I don’t want to take over the family insurance business.”

“Sounds like you have your hands full.”

She opened her mouth and almost told him her hands weren’t so full she couldn’t handle him. Instead, she clenched her teeth together and pushed off the car to open the trunk. “You been busy?”

“Not as busy as I’d like to be.” He followed her to the back of the car, surveyed the bags of groceries when she opened the trunk and glanced over his shoulder. Darcy followed his line of sight and saw a tall man in a pseudo-military suit leaning against a very large SUV with his arms crossed over his chest. He was just far enough away that he probably couldn’t hear her conversation with Bucky.

“Your boyfriend?” she asked.

Bucky turned his head back toward her and laughed softly under his breath. “No, just a friend.”

“Looks like he’s waiting for you.”

“He can wait. I’ll help you carry the bags in.”

“What are you, a bellhop or something? I never see anyone around here telling you what to do, so you have to be at least a little important.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“Just that you don’t need to help me carry groceries in.”

“You don’t want my help?” he asked, taking a step back.

“More like you’re probably too important to be offering it. I’m not dumb; I can put two and two together. You’re super strong and you appear to have the run of this place. The guards don’t really talk to you and actually seem a little intimidated by you.”

His gaze was heavy as he stared at her from across the four or five feet between them. After a long moment, he said, “Are _you_ intimidated?”

“I guess that depends,” Darcy said, reaching for one of the plastic bags.

“Depends?” When she looked back up at him, his blue eyes were wary. She had a twisting feeling in her gut that she might have just hurt his feelings without realizing. It was par for the course with her. Sometimes she felt like a bull in a china shop.

“Depends on what kind of intimidated. Am I scared of you? No. Honestly, you’re probably the nicest person around here. It’s more that I’m totally flustered by your…” She trailed off and then waved her free hand in the air between them, palm toward him. “By all that,” she said, finishing her statement.

Bucky looked down his body and then back up at her. “All what?”

His confusion pulled an abrupt bark of laughter out of her. “The whole package.” When he raised his brows in question, she said, “Either you’re fishing for compliments or you have no idea how attractive you are.”

His lips parted as he opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Darcy watched him tilt his head, turning his gaze away from her in a show of what appeared to be bashfulness. Letting out a breathy, disbelieving exhale of laughter, he turned his gaze back to her and smiled. “Let me help you carry the bags inside.”

“Hey, knock yourself out. I mean, I don’t even rank high enough to get the desk guard’s help, but if you want to waste your talents on me then by all means.”

“I’m not wasting anything,” he murmured softly as he stepped forward and leaned into the trunk to gather every bag except the one she was holding. He smelled like soap and leather. Darcy felt her stomach flip over at the scent and the heat coming off his body. Taking a step back, she tried to clear her head so she didn’t say something embarrassing like how much she wanted to rip his clothes off or how she wondered if his lips were as soft as his hair looked.

The man across the parking lot was smiling at them as he watched the scene play out. “Your friend looks very smug right now.”

Bucky didn’t bother to turn around and look. “I bet he does.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole.”

The deadpan, no-nonsense way he said it made her laugh. “He looks familiar,” she said. “Since Thor dropped out of the sky and into my life, I’ve been kinda obsessive about keeping up with the Avengers. Am I crazy or is that guy The Falcon?”

Bucky sighed. “You’re not crazy.”

“Interesting. So, he’s waiting for you. Which means I should be asking what Avenger you are, right?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed and glanced over his shoulder at his friend. When Bucky turned back to Darcy, he said, “I’m not.”

“Okay, okay. You like to be mysterious and private. I gotcha.”

“Darcy,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. The rumble of it made her toes curl in her shoes. “I’m no one. Really.”

“Then you’re in the wrong line of work, buddy. You should be modeling underwear or something."

He tried to suppress the smile. When he couldn’t, she watched him turn his head to the side to hide it just like he’d done a minute ago. “Where to with the bags?”

“Fourth floor. They put Jane and me next to each other.” She closed the trunk and stepped up onto the sidewalk that led to the door. “Do you Avenger-types live here?”

“Yes, but I’m not an Avenger.”

“So you say,” she said, opening the door to let him through with the fifteen bags hanging from his hands. “I saw a woman out back a couple of days ago. She lifted a piece of heavy equipment with her mind. Scarlet Witch, right?”

“Right,” he agreed as they walked down the hall.

“Huh. Wild.” She punched the button by the elevator and turned to Bucky. “I wish Thor were here. I haven’t seen him in years. How is he?”

“Good, from what I understand. I only met him briefly.” They stepped onto the elevator. “How did you meet him?”

“Jane and I were in New Mexico doing research. He fell out of the sky. I Tasered him.”

“That was you?” he asked, a grin pulling up one corner of his mouth.

“It was. Wait, has this story gotten around?”

“Yes, one of his favorite stories, I think.”

“What a dork,” Darcy said, turning away so she could smile to herself. The God of Thunder himself was telling strangers stories about how he met her. Maybe she wasn’t such a loser after all.

The elevator dinged a moment before the doors opened on Darcy’s floor. She led Bucky down the hall and pressed the pad of her thumb into the black square to the left of her door. It whooshed open, and Darcy stepped inside. She sat the bag in her hand on the small counter of the kitchenette just beyond the threshold before she noticed Bucky hadn’t followed her inside.

“Uh, Bucky?”

“Do you want me to leave these here inside your door?” he asked.

She stepped around the corner and looked at him standing in her doorway. His eyes seemed nervous. “Uh, if you want to. Are you afraid to come inside?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head once. “No, I’m…” Bucky stepped over the threshold and slipped past her to carefully set the bags on the little bistro table next to the mini-fridge. “I didn’t want to presume.”

“Presume that you could bring my groceries inside when you were carrying them?”

“It sounds silly when you say it like that,” he murmured.

Darcy chewed on her lower lip. “It’s not silly. You’re not silly.”

“Sometimes I feel like I am.”

“Well, you’re not.”

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants and bunched his shoulders up around his ears. “You need anything else?”

She considered telling him that she wouldn’t mind being carried over to the bed if he was the one doing the carrying, but that was probably a monumentally bad idea. He was out of her league and that would just make her seem desperate after she’d already professed his hotness out in the parking lot. Plus, he didn’t seem in any state to be joking around at that moment. In fact, he looked more than a little uncomfortable in her space.

“No, I’m good. Thanks for your help, not-an-Avenger.”

This made him smile softly at her. “Anytime, doll.” That said, he walked past her, closing the door as he left. The smell of soap and leather lingered in the swirling air for a moment before it dissipated. “Doll,” she whispered. “ _Doll_.” It gave her that fluttery feeling in her stomach. “Oh, god, Darcy. You don’t need a fucking crush right now. Do not do this to yourself.”

 

* * *

 

“So, I have the biggest fucking crush on that guy with the hair.”

Jane looked up from her screen. “You what?”

“A crush on the guy with the hair,” Darcy repeated.

“He has a crush on you?”

Darcy groaned and leaned back in her chair. “Jane, Jane, Jane. Sometimes I think we speak two different languages. Why would _he_ have a crush on _me_? Use your big brain. Have you even seen him? He’s gorgeous. I’m the crusher.”

Jane tilted her coffee cup back and finished the last of the dark roast Darcy had made that morning. “Ask him out,” she said.

The thought of it horrified Darcy. “No way. Are you trying to decimate what little self-esteem I’ve managed to retain all these years? He’s not for me. He’s for admiring from afar and overanalyzing each minuscule interaction for hidden meanings that aren’t actually there but give my life purpose because fetching your coffee is a real fucking bore.”

“Mmm,” Jane hummed in non-committal agreement.

“You don’t listen to even ten percent of what I say, Foster. I erased the data you collected last night and saved a bunch of memes I found on Imgur.”

“I’m looking at the data from last night, Darcy,” Jane replied, waving her coffee cup in the air.

“Damn you and your selective hearing, woman.” Pushing herself out of her office chair, Darcy walked over and took Jane’s cup to refill it from the coffee pot along the back wall. “What do you think he does?”

“Who?”

She turned back to Jane with the cup. “Mr. Gorgeous. Who do you think?”

“Which one is Mr. Gorgeous?”

“Bucky, the hottest guy in the building who I have had three most-cherished conversations with.”

“I don’t know, Darcy. Why don’t you ask him?”

She sighed and dropped back into her chair after depositing the cup on the corner of Jane’s desk. “You know, you’re the worst when it comes to having conversations that aren’t about your research.” They sat in silence for a moment before Darcy said, “Do you think Thor will be back soon?”

“I don’t know,” Jane replied, never taking her eyes off the monitor.

“I get the feeling you don’t care either. Why?”

Jane shook her head. “Because he’s not going to change for anyone, and I need some stability. I need to focus on my research.”

“He’s got muscles, though.”

“And daddy issues,” Jane replied.

Darcy nodded. “True, true. Although to be fair, I think they might be _family_ issues in general. Hell, I have those.” When Jane didn’t respond, Darcy said, “I think Bucky might have issues, but I can’t really put my finger on what it is. He’s all sweet and soft-smiley and then he clams up. It’s weird.”

“Mmm hmm,” Jane replied, her attention back on the data.

“Ooh, he’s probably been hurt. I’m going to sit here and fantasize about his tragic past and how I’m going to heal him with blowjobs and back rubs.”

“Darcy,” Jane said in an admonishing tone.

“It’s fantasy, Jane, not reality. Cut me some slack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is reading and has commented. You all make my day so much better with your lovely words and cheerleading.


	3. Chapter 3

> _"In a wide sea of eyes, I see one that I recognize and I know…” - Ben Folds (The Luckiest)_

“Who is she?” Sam asked as Bucky walked around the vehicle and opened the passenger door.

“A girl who works in the labs,” he told Sam, dropping into the seat.

Sam slid behind the wheel of the SUV and said, “I know you got her name.”

“It’s Darcy. What’s your point?”

“You gonna ask her out?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he told his friend.

“What’s stupid about that?”

“That ain’t for me.”

Sam scoffed and hit the button to start the vehicle. “Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Why?”

Bucky shook his head and turned his gaze out the passenger window. “I ain’t asking her out. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

“So tell her. She works with Jane Foster, doesn’t she?"

Bucky smiled to himself. “She’s the one who tased Thor when he first got to Earth.”

Sam chuckled and turned out of the parking lot. “No shit? Sounds like you might have a crush on her.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Wilson.”

“I’m just saying that the world is saved and you’re back in the States. I’m sure the next crisis is around the corner, but until then why don’t you live a little? Take a page from Steve’s book, you know.”

“Like I said, she doesn’t know who I am.”

“Like I said, tell her. If it scares her off then no harm, no foul. Right?”

The thought of telling Darcy about his past made him feel sick to his stomach. He’d worked hard to accept what he’d done over the two years he’d spent out of the ice in Wakanda, but he wasn’t quite at a point where he could just knock on that dame’s door and tell her that he’d been an assassin, that he’d killed hundreds of people. Bucky could just imagine the look on her face if he ever admitted to his past.

“She ask you about your hand, your arm?”

“No,” he told Sam.

“She will eventually.”

Bucky could feel himself slipping into a foul mood over Sam’s questions. “She ain’t seen my hand or arm, so there’s nothing to ask about.”

“So, you’re hiding them from her?

“No,” he snapped. “I don’t go around playing show and fuckin’ tell, Wilson.”

Sam nodded, his eyes not leaving the road. “So when she sees them, what are you going to say?”

“Who says I’m going to talk to her again?” It was a stupid question

Sam must have thought so, too, because he laughed. “You went out of your way to carry her groceries upstairs. You’re gonna talk to her again.”

“It wasn’t out of my way.”

“Yeah, it was. You made us late.”

Bucky shifted in his seat and turned his gaze out the windshield. “Then step on the gas, Wilson.”

 

* * *

 

“Mom. Mom. _Mom_. I didn’t say that. I told you last week that things are busy.”

Bucky leaned against the side of the building and watched her pace back and forth across the circular drive. The place was quiet today, and she only had to dodge two vehicles as they pulled out. She had her phone pressed to her ear. He knew he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but she was outside and she wasn’t even trying to be quiet.

“But I don’t want to sell insurance. I already have a job.” After a long pause, she squatted and pressed her fingertips to the concrete curb before sitting down on it. “I don’t even know him, mom. That’s so embarrassing. Please don’t try to set me up.” Another pause as she bent over to rest her forehead on her knee. “Mom, no. I don’t.... No, it’s not that. I’m not in the right space for that. Mom, that’s not—I’m not like sixty. People don’t get married when they are twenty-two anymore.” She sighed and listened to her mother talk for several long seconds. After almost a minute, she said, “Look, I’ve got to go. I have work to do. I promise I’ll try to get up there to see you and dad in a week or two. Okay, bye.”

She disconnected and sat her phone down on the curb beside her leg. He watched as she leaned back and propped herself up with her hands in the grass behind her. Her legs were sticking out into the circular drive, but there was no traffic. He stood there and traced the contours of her body with his gaze, starting at her jawline before dropping to her abundant chest and then to the dip where her waist was. She was in a pair of jean shorts that exposed her legs. He swallowed as he hit her ankles and then flicked his eyes back up to the way a few unruly strands of hair had escaped the clip holding most of it in place.

Sam’s comments from two days before echoed in his head. He couldn’t ask her out. No fucking way could he just walk up and ask if she wanted to see a show with him or go to dinner. Is that what people even did in the twenty-first century? He felt like a dinosaur when he looked at her and the effortless way she was walking around in a T-shirt that was a little tight in the chest and a pair of shorts that gave him a view of about half her shapely thighs.

“Hey there, mystery-non-Avenger-Bucky.”

He pulled his gaze away from her hair to look into her eyes from across the few yards that separated them.

“You didn’t just hear all of that horrible conversation I had with my mother, did you?”

Bucky took a tentative step toward her and paused, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I did. Sorry.”

She lifted a hand up and waved his apology away, but didn’t make a move to get up. “Don’t sweat it. Family, right? So frustrating.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, walking over to stand in front of her.

She looked up at him with those big, blue eyes and smiled. “I bet Bruce Banner knows who you are. I’m going to ask him who my knight in black leather is so I can thank you for carrying my shit around all the time.”

Bucky knew she was teasing, but the thought of Bruce telling her exactly who he used to be was terrifying. “I’m no one, Darcy. I’m just here helping out some friends.”

“I’ll let you slide for now,” she told him.

He smiled down at her, wishing things were different. What would it be like to take her out to a nice restaurant for dinner, to press his leg against hers beneath the table, knowing that it was their little secret? After a moment’s hesitation, Bucky pulled his hands out of his pockets and sat down next to her on the curb. The sun was hot on their backs as it descended toward the treeline. “When do you get that off?” he asked, nodding at her cast.

She lifted it up and sighed. “Don’t know. If I’m lucky, later this week.”

“And if you’re not?”

“In two or three weeks.”

“I’ll hope you’re lucky, then,” he said.

She leaned toward him and bumped his right shoulder with hers. The only thing he could think about was what would have happened if he’d sat on her other side and she’d touched his left shoulder. How much information did she have access to? How fast could she piece together his history? The fact that he survived and had been living in Wakanda wasn’t exactly a secret any longer, but it was only known to those who had been or were currently involved with the Avengers. Unlike Sam, there were no recent articles about him in newspapers or even in tabloids. His sordid history was old news in this twenty-four-hour news cycle. He thought about her finding an article from years ago when he’d been accused of the bombing in Vienna. It made him want to throw up.

“You okay?” she asked, bumping shoulders with him again.

Bucky forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. Where did you say your folks live?”

“Just north of Kennebunk in Maine. I should just…” Darcy trailed off and sighed. “I should just suck it up and take a car up there for a weekend or something. I mean, it’s not like Jane can’t fend for herself for three days.”

“You sound like you don’t want to go. What’s bothering you? It’s gotta be more than your mom trying to get you to join the family business.”

His comment made her laugh, but it sounded bitter and more than a little sad. “Don’t be so observant. It’s not fair.”

Bucky glanced in her direction. “Not fair?”

“Yeah, you’re not allowed to be hot and smart. It’s pretty disgusting.”

He chuckled at her joke. “Sorry. I’ll try to tone it down.”

“You do that. And maybe don’t wash your hair for a week.” She leaned away to look at him, her eyes narrowed. “Nevermind. That might make you look hotter.”

“But I’d smell worse,” he offered.

She nodded slowly. “True. So, it’s settled. Stop bathing and stop being so insightful.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And don’t call me ma’am.”

“Yes, Darcy.”

“Oh god, don’t do that either. You don’t know your own power.”

He laughed again, feeling his heart beating faster in his chest. That steady thump-thump had an extra kick to it when she teased him. “What’d your mom want?”

“Same thing she wants every time I talk to her. Come home, work for your dad, get married to the Kanners’ son, have three to four kids, die a slow death.”

“Mmm,” he said, nodding. “That’s… wow.”

“The die-a-slow-death is kinda implied,” Darcy said.

Her dry sense of humor was one of the things he enjoyed about his interactions with her. “Yeah, I figured. She’s your mom and all.”

“Right. Parents can’t come out and say that shit to you. You gotta read between the lines.”

They sat in companionable silence for a moment. Bucky looked up to find that her gaze was on his left hand where it rested on his thigh. The glove simulated flesh and in almost every circumstance it helped keep his identity a secret. Well, it wasn’t really a secret, but Bucky would prefer not to advertise it. Feeling self-conscious, he slid the hand off his leg and let it rest on the curb where she couldn’t see.

“Let’s talk about your hair care regime. What conditioner do you use?” Darcy asked.

The smile and wink that accompanied her out-of-left-field question made him laugh softly and shake his head. “Whatever they give me.”

“Ahh, so I found another one of your mysteries. You don’t want to give away your hair care secrets.”

“Ain’t no secrets to keep. You are welcome to come look in my shower.”

Darcy lifted her eyebrows and pressed her lips together in a smile as she slid her eyes over to him. “Did you just invite me to check out your shower?”

“Uh, I guess I did. Did you just point out how awkward I am?”

“Takes one to know one, Bucky.”

They both jumped when her phone started vibrating across the concrete curb they were seated on.

“Ugh,” Darcy said, “it’s Jane. Duty calls.”

Before she could stand, he pushed himself to his feet and extended his right hand to her. Darcy hesitated for a fraction of a second before reaching out to take it, allowing him to pull her up. “Don’t let your mom talk you into dying a slow death,” he said softly.

“Don’t give me false hope that you’re gonna let me see your shower,” she shot back before she walked away toward the building.

Bucky watched her go, his eyes on the sway of her hips. When the door to the building closed behind her, he inhaled a breath. “Don’t even think about it, old man,” he warned himself.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Bucky said as he stepped around the broken concrete and twisted rebar that had spilled out of the dumpster. Bruce was working alongside a backhoe and a bulldozer as they cleared the site of the training facility.

“Oh, hey!” Bruce said, looking up and smiling. Of all the things Bucky had seen in the past few years, a friendly and smiling Hulk was one of the stranger ones. He’d seen pictures of Bruce Banner before and could see the same man in the bone structure and eyes, but this hybrid of Bruce and Hulk was fascinating.

Bucky surveyed the work that had been done over the past month. It was still a long way from being ready to rebuild, but it was getting there. The craters made by Thanos’ ship would be filled in after the wreckage was taken away. “Need any help?” he asked Bruce.

“Nah, I’m about done for the day.”

“Thought you’d be in the labs.”

Bruce wiped his sweaty, green forehead. “Trying to keep the peace with the Other Guy, you know,” he told Bucky. “Equal amounts of lab work and smashing. Physical work feels right sometimes.”

“Looks good. Do you know when they’re going to start building?”

“Maybe a month or two? Earthwork contractor is coming in to level the ground and dig the basement soon,” Bruce said, tossing a massive piece of concrete into the dumpster like it was a child’s toy. Pausing for a moment, Bruce leveled his gaze on Bucky. “Something on your mind?”

It was a bit disorienting to have what looked like a muscle-bound green monster looking at you with all that intellect and insight in his eyes. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You wanna talk about it?” Bruce sat down heavily on a swell of dirt that had been pushed up into a small hill.

Sighing, Bucky sat opposite him on a piece of concrete that had been blasted from the building. “You know… my history, right?”

Bruce nodded. “With the Commandos and then HYDRA?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure,” he replied with a shrug. “Why?”

“And the official story a couple years ago was that I died in Siberia,” Bucky said.

Bruce nodded. “Yeah, for now. We’re working on a full pardon from the government. Fury has already filed—”

“I know,” Bucky interrupted. “I’m not worried about that.”

“Okay.” Bruce leaned forward and rested his massive forearms on his knees. “So what are you worried about?”

“I’m not worried about anything.”

“Well, you kinda are.”

Heaving a heavy sigh, Bucky said, “I think one of the girls working in the lab might ask you about me.”

Bruce’s eyes shot up his forehead. “Oh, yeah? Which one? Darcy?”

“Yeah. Darcy.”

“And you want me to confirm or deny?”

“Could you just not say anything?”

Bruce looked down at the ground between his feet and let several beats of silence pass between them. When he finally looked up, he said, “Sure. Yeah, it’s not my place to talk about your past. That being said, though, you should probably think about why you’re keeping it a secret and if that’s really in your best interest.”

“I’m not— It’s not a secret.”

“You’re asking me not to tell her anything if she asks. Feels like a secret.”

“It’s not. I just… I’d like to tell her in my own time.”

Bruce nodded. “I get it.”

“Do you? Bucky asked.

“Oh, sure. Yeah. You think she’ll run the other way when she finds out and you’d like to put that day off as long as you can. All too familiar with that, man. All too familiar.”

“I’m not— It’s not…” Bucky sighed. “Yeah, okay.” After a long moment, he pushed himself up and rolled his left shoulder back. “Thanks, Bruce.”

“Hey, anytime. Just… think about telling her. Sooner rather than later, you know. She’ll find out eventually. You know she knows Thor, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Seems like she can take care of herself if you ask me.”

“Maybe. Just… Just give me some time.”

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s stomach dropped into his feet when he walked into the break room and saw Darcy and Wanda standing in front of the snack machine. He’d just gotten back from talking to Bruce, not realizing that there were other people around here who could give her information. Darcy was easy to talk to, even for people who had trust issues like Wanda. Or like him.

“This is amazing. You’re amazing,” Darcy said, looking back and forth from the vending machine to Wanda’s softly glowing hands.

A pack of gum that had been lodged between the metal coil and the shelf fell to the drawer at the bottom of the machine. Darcy bent to retrieve it.

“I mean, I saw you lifting trucks and shit, but this is a whole other level of usefulness. You to the rescue,” Darcy said, unwrapping the gum and offering a stick to Wanda. The other woman accepted it with some trepidation.

“It’s nothing. Thanks for...” Wanda trailed off and dropped her gaze to the floor.

Darcy frowned. “For what? Needing you to come to the rescue and unstick my gum?”

Wanda gave her a forced smile. “For not treating me like I’m a leper.”

“Oh my god, are there lepers here?” Darcy asked, feigning surprise and making Wanda laugh.

“You know what I mean. I’m, uh, I’m Wanda.” The redhead stuck out her hand tentatively.

Without a moment’s pause to consider that those hands had just glowed with red energy, Darcy reached out and wrapped her fingers around it, shaking. “I know who you are. I’m Darcy. Unlike you, I don’t do anything cool. I just babysit scientists.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Darcy.”

“I’m losing my mind around here, so it is super awesome to meet you. Everyone is so serious and no one will talk to me but you and Bruce and Bucky.”

“Oh, yeah?” Wanda asked. Bucky could feel the twist in his insides as he let the conversation play out in his mind.

Instead of allowing it to go any further, he cleared his throat and entered the room. “Speak of the devil!” Darcy said, smiling at him like she was actually glad to see him.

He gave her a tight smile and nodded at Wanda. “Could I have a word with you?” he asked the redhead.

She raised her brows in confusion but nodded slowly. “Yeah, sure.”

“Darcy,” he said with a deferential nod in her direction before he left.

The way the beautiful smile on her face fell as he turned to leave made his heart ache. _She likes you_ , he thought. What a fucking disaster. He’d done this to himself. He’d _wanted_ this from the moment he saw her out there struggling with a suitcase, that cherry red cast on her arm. He’d wanted her to light up when she saw him and now that she did he felt sick to his stomach over the implications.

“What’s up?” Wanda asked as she followed him out of the break room and down the hall.

After they had turned the corner, Bucky stopped and said, “I’d be grateful if you could avoid talking about my past with anyone here. Fury is… Well, he’s submitted a petition to wipe my record clean so I don’t have to worry about legal troubles now that I’m back and I’m afraid that if—”

“If she finds out, then she won’t like you?”

“What?” he asked.

“Darcy.”

“I’m not talking about Darcy.”

“Oh, yes, you are.”

He sighed. Was he that transparent? “Okay, fine. Yes. I’d like it if you didn’t tell Darcy what you know about who I was, who I used to be.”

“She’s nice, Bucky. You should tell her. Most people here are afraid of me. Except for her for some reason.”

“I’m not ready.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. I won’t say anything,” she replied.

 

* * *

 

He ended up on a jet to Turkey with Sam and Rhodey the next morning to take care of a minor mess in that region. Things had been quiet since the shit hit the fan with Thanos, but over the past few weeks, there had been a couple of issues that popped up. It wasn’t anything that a handful of them couldn’t deal with, though. They were gone for almost a week, and when he got back, Bucky was surprised to see Darcy at a concrete table behind the building eating a sandwich with that t red cast missing.

“Hi,” he said, making his way over to stand on the other side of the table.

“Hey, stranger,” she said, brushing the crumbs off her hands. “Where have you been?”

“Turkey.”

“Important top secret mission?” She wiggled her brows at him.

He smiled down at her. “No, not really. When did you get the cast removed?”

“Mmm, about four or five days ago.” She looked down at her arm while he looked at the way her dark lashes contrasted with the skin of her face. “Feels weird,” she said.

“I’m glad you got the cast off,” Bucky told her, pushing his hair back when the wind tossed it into his face.

“No, really,” Darcy said with a grin on her face. “You use Pureology, right? Aveda? Redken?”

“What?”

“Conditioner. My sister-in-law worked for a salon supply store a few years ago. I could get Pureology there pretty much at cost. My hair is withering without it.”

Bucky drew his brows together. “What is Pureology?”

“The best shampoo and conditioner money can buy.”

He went from confusion to amusement as he shook his head at her. “Just the stuff in the white and blue bottle they stock in the supply room downstairs.”

“I’m going to sneak in and check out your shower one day. Better hide your secrets.”

“I’ll leave my door unlocked,” he said with a wink.

Her cheeks pinked up and she rolled her eyes at him. “Go away before you make me think you’re flirting with me,” she said, dropping her eyes back down to her sandwich.

Bucky opened his mouth to tell her that he _was_ flirting with her but was doing a poor job of it since he hadn’t done this in decades. Before he could get the words out of his mouth, he remembered exactly who he was and exactly what she’d do if she knew she was talking to a reformed, brainwashed assassin responsible for too many murders to count. He could forgive himself, but he couldn’t forget what he’d done or how other people would likely react to hearing about it.

“I’ll leave you to your lunch. I’m glad your arm is feeling better, Darcy.” Wincing at how formal and _stupid_ he sounded, Bucky turned on his heel and walked back inside the building.


	4. Chapter 4

> _“I’ve been watching you for some time. Can’t stop staring at those ocean eyes. Burning cities and napalm skies, fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes.” - Billie Eilish (Ocean Eyes)_

He didn’t like her. Or maybe he liked her but didn’t really _like_ her _that_ way. It was just hard to not get all caught up in it when he smiled at her or when he kept glancing over at her while they were in the same room as he was doing today.

She’d gone out to pick up takeout at a Thai place twenty minutes away and had settled down at a corner table in the break room with her food and her phone. Bucky had walked in Sam Wilson. Sam was standing there with those incredible arms shown off by the tight Under Armour shirt he wore. And yet, Darcy gave him only a cursory glance because she couldn’t seem to stop looking at Bucky in his leather jacket. Which was why she knew he kept glancing at her, too.

Three days ago when they’d last spoken, she’d made a joke about him leaving before she got the impression he was flirting with her. He left, of course. In fact, he damn near ran back inside. God forbid she think he might be interested in something other than talking. Whatever. Darcy shoveled the cashew chicken in her mouth and pointed her gaze down at her phone. That lasted all of twenty seconds before she was sneaking a peek at Bucky again like some kind of masochist.

Instead of catching Bucky’s eye this time, she found herself looking right into Sam’s brown ones. He flashed her a smile and stepped around Bucky to walk over to her table. She’d managed to force a closed-mouth, nervous grin by the time he got to her table. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sam Wilson.”

Darcy swallowed her food and nodded. “Yeah. We haven’t. I’m, uh, Darcy Lewis. I work with Jane Foster.”

“Thor and Bruce have told me about your and Jane’s work,” Sam said. “It’s good to have you both aboard.”

“Well, it’s more Jane’s work than mine. I’m just… along for the ride.”

“She’s being modest,” Sam said, looking over at Bucky who had reluctantly trailed after Sam.

Bucky’s eyes didn’t stray from hers when he told Sam, “Yes, she is. How’s the arm, Darcy?”

She lifted it and twisted her wrist. “Good as new, just a little pale.”

There was that fucking smile again. That warm smile that just melted all over her when the corners of his eyes crinkled. That smile that said he heard her and he cared about what she said and wanted only the best for her. It was absolutely ridiculous because a smile couldn’t say that much. “Good to hear,” he said before rolling his tongue out to wet his lower lip. Kill me now, Darcy thought, trying not to stare.

“That’s right. Didn’t you have a cast on when you got here?” Sam asked.

Darcy dragged her fork through the cashew chicken. “Yeah. Took a tumble down the stairs when I popped back into existence.”

“Ouch,” Sam winced. “Sounds painful, doesn’t it, Bucky?”

“Yeah, it does,” Bucky said in a strained voice. He’d gone from all sweet and warm to uncomfortable and cold in the space of a few seconds.

Darcy didn’t get it. He was probably just being nice to her because she was pathetic. Each time they ran into one another she was either having some sort of meltdown with her mother on the phone or eating alone like a loser. “Don’t worry; all better now,” Darcy said, keeping her voice light and returning her gaze to the food in front of her, appetite gone.

When Sam’s knuckles rapped against the top of the table twice, she looked up at him. He smiled down and said, “Well, nice to meet you, Darcy. We’ve got to get back to work, but Bucky and I appreciate all you’re doing.”

“I’m not really doing anything,” she told him.

“Sure you are,” he replied with a smile. “You ever need anything, you let us know.”

“Us?”

“Bucky. Or me.”

She shifted her gaze over to Bucky who looked like he wanted to sink into the earth. She was right there with him, but it still made her feel like shit to realize she’d misread almost every single one of their interactions. She should have known better and not let that flirtatious fantasy get away from her.

“Right,” Darcy said. “I’ll send a smoke signal or something. Thanks.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sam repeated before backing away.

Bucky didn’t immediately follow, and Darcy couldn’t stop herself from looking up at him. She shifted in her seat and poked her fork into the food in the takeout container. “Thai,” she told him lamely.

“Smells good,” he said.

“Tastes good. You should try it sometime.” Could someone just save her by taping her fucking mouth shut?

“Yeah. Sometime. You okay?” His voice was soft, but his body was tense, his back rigid and his shoulders tight. Darcy would have said he was angry, but there was some element of vulnerability that told her it was something else.

She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yeah, I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“You, uh, don’t sound okay.”

This made him smile, but it was very obviously forced. “I’m okay. I’ll see you around.”

“Yep. I’ll be here,” Darcy replied. When he turned to walk away, she winced and bent over to bounce her forehead off the table three times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered under her breath. They probably walked down the hall with Sam making a comment about how Bucky had a new and unwanted admirer. So embarrassing.

 

* * *

 

Darcy straight-armed the door to the lab and didn’t even flinch when it bounced off the hallway wall. She felt like she was in the center of some terrible tornado of guilt and self-loathing and anger and indignation. Jane had dismissed her ideas twice that morning, and she’d wrapped up the day with an after-dinner conversation with her mother and father. They’d put her on speaker to make her feel like a piece of shit for not visiting and for having a life that didn’t fit in their little box of acceptable.

That would have been enough to ruin any day, but it was all made worse by her feeling like maybe her parents were right. Maybe she was just spinning her wheels and wasting her life, her _potential_. God, she hated that fucking word. Potential. _You have such potential, Darcy. If only you’d grow up and accept that you can’t hop around the world with some crazy scientist who isn’t even paying you a living wage, Darcy. What are you going to do when you’re sixty-five and ready to retire, Darcy? That will be here before you know it, Darcy. We miss you and haven’t seen you in so long, Darcy._

She shoved her cell into the back pocket of her jeans and turned the corner. The air conditioner in the older building was struggling today and that made the workspace she shared with Jane especially hot. She needed some fresh air before she wrapped up Jane’s latest task.

Just as she rounded the corner, her ass started vibrating. Darcy fumbled to pull her cell phone out. “Shit. Fuck. Shit,” she muttered under her breath when she saw her father’s number on the display. Stopping to press her back against the wall, she said, “Hey, dad.”

“Hey, sweet pea. I know we just hung up, but… I wanted to… Well, I miss you.”

Darcy blinked as that unmistakable stinging in her sinuses foretold tears. “Miss you, too, dad.”

“I’ve been missing you longer, though,” he said softly.

She exhaled and reached up to slide a finger under her glasses, trying to wipe away the tears before they could fall. He was right and the reminder made her feel like the worst piece of shit. “Yeah,” Darcy agreed. “It’s been almost six years for you.”

“And not even a year for you,” he said. “I know that, sweet pea. I know you think you were just back here for Hanukkah less than a year ago, but… you were gone for a very long time with your mom and your brother and little Sarah.” The snap had left her sister-in-law and her nephew Adrien, but his precocious four-year-old older sister Sarah had popped out of existence with the rest of the family. Now Sarah was the younger sister and Adrien was trying to figure out how to adjust to having a sibling. He’d been a baby when everything had happened.

“I’m sorry, dad. I’ll rent a car next weekend and come visit.”

“I know you’re busy,” he said.

“I’m not that busy, dad. I—I should have come seen you earlier. I forget… I forget about how long its been for you. All of this is just so weird.”

“Your mom’s worried about you, sweet pea,” he told her in a kind voice.

Darcy swallowed the lump in her throat or at least tried to. “I’m okay, dad. Really.”

“We just want you to be happy.”

“I’m— I’m happy.” The words fell flat. Not quite a lie, but also not quite the truth. “I’m trying,” she amended.

“I know you are. Just have pity on your old man and come visit him. Okay?”

She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Yeah, okay. I promise. Next weekend.”

“Love you to the—”

“Moon and back,” she finished for him. “Thanks, dad.”

“Goodnight, sweet pea.”

Darcy pulled in a shaky breath as she disconnected and shoved the phone back into her pocket. “Fuck,” she muttered as she dried her tears with the hem of her T-shirt and pushed off the wall. The building was quiet with most of the staff gone for the day or tucked away in their apartments on one of the upper floors at this time of night.

She pushed open the side door and stepped out into the cool night air. It felt good on her flushed cheeks. Just as the door clicked shut, she saw movement on her right. A figure pushed off the brick wall, making Darcy squeak and jump back.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said.

“Bucky?” she asked, squinting in the low light.

“Yeah. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t mean to interrupt your—you—whatever you’re doing.”

He chuckled softly. “It’s okay. You’re not interrupting anything. I was just getting some air. I’m not used to these little apartments.”

Darcy took a step closer to him. “Oh, yeah? What are you used to? Fancy mansions?”

“More like outdoor huts. I’ve been working on a farm in Africa for the past couple of years. I stayed in a hut next to the field and my little herd of goats.”

“Oh,” she said, taken off-guard by the answer. “Goats?”

Bucky smiled. “I miss the fresh air. Can’t seem to get used to living like this again.”

“It _is_ a bit claustrophobic,” she agreed.

“You okay?” he asked.

Darcy pressed her back against the wall and let herself slide down until her ass was on the concrete. He was a couple yards away. “Just dandy,” she said.

“You wanna talk about it?”

She looked up at him.“About what?” After a pause, she said, “You offering to listen?”

“Always,” he replied. The dim light above the door illuminated half his face; it was enough to see the tilt of his head and the lift at the corner of his mouth.

Shaking her head, Darcy said, “I’m fine. Really.”

Bucky took a handful of careful, measured steps over to where she sat on the concrete and lowered himself down beside her. “I’m fine, too,” he murmured.

“Are you?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“Is now one of those times?”

“I think so,” he whispered.

Darcy laughed softly under her breath. “I feel like we’re having some kind of conversation inside a conversation. It’s not my style; I’m pretty blunt.”

“I can tell,” he said.

“You smell nice,” she blurted out. “Sorry, that was a weird thing to say.”

“No, it’s—it’s fine,” Bucky told her, a subtle grin playing on his lips. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

Darcy sighed and rested the back of her head against the building. “I just got off the phone with my parents. I feel guilty, and I’m pretty sure I’m in the running for worst daughter ever.”

“They made you feel that way?”

“Yes and no. I mean, objectively, I _am_ a shitty daughter. I know it feels like I was home about six or seven months ago, but for my dad, it was, like, over five years ago. And I keep forgetting that or whatever. Mostly because I don’t want to deal with my mom nagging me about getting a real job or getting married or having kids or being like my fucking brother who is the best son ever.” Darcy laughed, but it sounded bitter. “God, you probably think I’m a loser. I’m— I didn’t mean to tell you all this. You’re trying to be nice and suddenly I’m vomiting up my family drama onto your lap and—” She trailed off with a disgusted sound.

“Don’t,” he said. “You’re fine—perfect. You miss your folks?”

“Sure. When I’m not talking to them about my life choices.”

Bucky chuckled. “Your life choices ain’t so bad, doll.”

The intimacy of his voice and the term of endearment dangling off the end of the statement sent the colony of butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy. That name—doll—it was a little old fashioned. She kept thinking about his name and how it was so strange that he shared it with Captain America’s late best friend. That man was dead now, but it just felt… weird. Something about it was bothering her, she just couldn’t put her finger on it. Darcy picked at the hole in the knee of her jeans, unraveling one of the threads further. After a long moment of silence, she said, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Am I?” he asked.

“Guys like you aren’t nice to girls like me.” The statement sat between them like a massive canyon or a gulf of water so wide and deep there was no getting around it.

“What kind of guy am I?” he whispered. Darcy rolled her head over to see him staring straight ahead, his eyes focused out on the parking lot.

She turned her gaze out to follow his. “Perfect, probably good at everything, effortless, gorgeous, easy.”

He was shaking his head. “I’m none of that, doll. _None_ of it.”

“Ahh, you fooled me, you dork,” she said glancing over and smiling at him in hopes of lightening the mood.

He didn’t look at her, but he did smile back. “I’m struggling, but I can’t let anyone know,” he admitted.

“What’s the struggle?” she asked.

“How I fit into all this. The past few years for me… They’ve been a little crazy. Just when I felt like I could catch my breath, the ground dropped out from beneath me.”

“Ain’t that a bitch,” Darcy agreed. “Did getting snapped into oblivion drop the most recent ground?”

“I guess you could say that. Life here is difficult to adjust to.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me.”

He finally looked over at her, his face just inches away. “So, I’m not easy or effortless or perfect, or good.”

“But you’re still gorgeous, so you got one on me,” she teased.

Bucky smiled, and it was the warm smile that melted everything inside of her. “One on you, huh? I don’t know about that, doll. I think you might be wrong.”

“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, trying to sound scandalized, but failing.

“I don’t remember how flirting goes, so you’ll have to be the judge.”

“All I got over here is wishful thinking,” she teased.

“That’s funny because I feel like that’s all I got, too,” Bucky said, turning his gaze back out over the dark parking lot. “Are _you_ flirting with _me_?”

“Definitely, but I’m not expecting any reciprocity. I mean, I’m not delusional or anything. I know how it is. Even if you weren’t telling me you’re in a bad spot right now, I know you wouldn’t actually be serious about…” She trailed off and wiggled an index finger back and forth between them. “About this.”

“I wouldn’t?” He sounded surprised.

“Well, no, of course not. I’m not your speed. I picked up what you were putting down a few days ago.”

“What was I putting down?”

“On the back patio and in the break room? I know we’re just teasing each other. I get it. Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” he said almost reluctantly.

“What?” Darcy asked. “Did I misread that? I mean, you made it pretty clear you’re just playing around.”

“I did…” It was a strange combination of a question and a statement.

She inhaled and resumed picking at the hole in her jeans. “So, what made you go from working on a farm with your very own goats to working with the Avengers?”

“It wasn’t… wasn’t really a decision. It just kinda... Well, it just happened.”

“Same,” Darcy agreed. “You look up one day and you wonder how the hell you got here.”

“Yeah, you have no idea.”

“Are you ex-army? Jane and I have a bet and I need to decide if I should brag to her that I’m right or protect my pride.”

Bucky glanced over. “What’d you say?”

“Nuh uh, you answer first.”

“I’ll tell you what you want to hear,” he said. “Tell me what you wanna hear.”

“I want to hear the truth, hot stuff.”

His lips parted and she could see that her little throw-away nickname for him had tripped up his brain. “The truth,” he finally said, “is that I was in the service a while back. The army.”

“Ha!” Darcy exclaimed, her voice cutting through the quiet night. “I win.”

"You’re welcome, doll.”

“You shouldn’t call me doll when I’m in a vulnerable emotional state. It gives me ideas you don’t want me having.”

He didn’t respond right away. Darcy continued picking at her jeans and watching the occasional flicker of the streetlight further down the sidewalk. “How long are you here for?” he asked in a soft voice.

She shrugged. “To be determined. I just follow Jane around. I think they promised her a lab in the new facility they’re building. Dr. Banner is assembling a team of scientists. They need brains behind the brawn, I guess. Which is funny because he has both.”

“He does,” Bucky agreed.

“So,” Darcy said, lifting her elbow to poke him in the arm. “You might be stuck seeing me for a while. Sorry for your luck.”

“No need to apologize for that, doll.”

She poked him with her elbow again. “Did you forget what I just told you about that giving me ideas?”

“Nope,” he said, eyes looking forward at the cars but with a smile on his face.

“Flirt.” She threw the word at him like it was a derogatory term.

“I used to be. A long time ago”

Darcy chuckled. “A long time ago, huh? What are you? Thirty, thirty-five?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you do around here anyway, Bucky?”

He shrugged. “Whatever they tell me to do.”

“So, you’re ex-army, you’re super strong, and you run around with Sam Wilson. This is adding up to you being some sort of superhero.”

His tongue flicked out and wet his lower lip. “I’m a lot of things, but I ain’t a superhero.”

“Okay, okay. You obviously don’t want to talk about it.”

He turned his head to look at her before sliding his gaze off to the side. She could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought about something big enough to distract him from the conversation. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about it.”

“You can’t? Say no more, hot stuff. I understand.”

“Do you?” Bucky asked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” She laid her head back against the wall and said, “Ugh, I need to finish up some work for Jane before I can sleep.”

Bucky was standing in front of her in the blink of an eye. The guy made it look effortless. He extended his hand to help her up. Hesitating for only a moment, she reached out and let him lift her to her feet. As she straightened, her center of gravity pitched forward and she used her free hand to steady herself on his arm. The leather jacket was soft and supple beneath her fingers, but she pulled away quickly when she heard his sharp intake of breath. For a moment she thought maybe she’d hurt him, but the response must have been just shock that she’d touched something other than his offered hand.

“Sorry,” she muttered, pressing the palm that had touched his left arm against her thigh.

“Don’t. It’s okay. You just surprised me.”

“Not a touchy-feely type then?”

He chuckled and let go of her hand. “No, I’m not. Been working on it, though.”

“I’ve available for touchy-feely sessions, but you should be careful because if you take me up on that and keep calling me doll then I’m definitely going to get some ideas.”

“I’d probably get some ideas, too,” he conceded, flashing her a sly little grin before stepping back and shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Would you, now? Interesting. Do tell.”

“You got work to do. Maybe some other time,” he said.

“Raincheck,” she agreed, reaching for the handle on the door.


	5. Chapter 5

> _”There’s ten more hours of life I missed, but I don’t need them back because I found you. I can’t believe I get to know you. I can’t believe I get to show you.” - James Bay (I Found You)_

“I mean, what _kind_ of ideas?” Darcy asked Jane.

Jane didn’t respond right away. Finally, she looked up from the monitor and said, “What did you say?”

“I told him that flirting with me was going to give me ideas, and he said it gave him some ideas, too. What does that even mean?” Darcy asked, pointing the sucker she’d been eating at Jane.

“I have no idea, Darcy.”

Shaking her head, Darcy said, “Right. Right. I’m reading into it too much. He’s being nice and cute and, ugh, whatever. No, he’s being perfect and I’m being weird thinking it’s more than it is. We’re like friendly acquaintances at work who see each other in the breakroom.” She narrowed her eyes as her shoulders slumped. “Which is why he probably thinks I’m a basketcase since I’ve been telling him about my family drama-llama.”

“Mmm hmm,” Jane mumbled.

“You’re not even listening, dude.” After pausing for a moment, she added, “You know, I’ve been looking for a new job.”

Jane stopped what she was doing and said, “You have?” without even looking up at Darcy.

“I don’t want to, but… Sometimes I feel like you don’t want me around.”

“Darcy…”

“It wasn’t so bad before… you know, before we disappeared, but the past couple months have been… I don’t know what you want, Jane.” She stared at the top of Jane’s head because the other woman refused to look up.

Jane sniffed and lifted her hands to wipe her cheeks.

“Are you _crying_?”

When Jane looked up, her face was wet and there were more tears welling up, threatening to spill over her lower eyelids. “I’m sorry, Darcy. I’m really sorry.”

Darcy’s heart dropped into her stomach at the display of emotion. “Janie?”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Jane whispered, wiping away the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I know I’ve been difficult lately. I… I don’t mean it. I don’t want you to feel like I don’t want you here. I _do_. I can’t imagine… I can’t imagine doing this without you.”

Darcy pulled in a breath, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. “What’s wrong, Jane?”

She gave Darcy a frustrated laugh and wiped more tears from her face. “Do you think he’s okay?”

There was only one _he_ when it came to Jane Foster, and Darcy shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was even with her friend bluffing like a fucking pro about not caring. “I know he’s okay, Jane. Bucky said he left on a spaceship with some other people he knew. I asked Bruce about him last week. He lost his family, but he was in good spirits when he left.”

“Right,” Jane agreed, sniffing and pushing her hair out of her face. “Right. He’s fine. Whatever. I’m just so behind on everything, my research, my work. I lost five years. _Five years_ is forever when you’re dealing with this type of—”

“Jane,” she interrupted. “Science can wait. You’re here now. You’re working with the Avengers. After all that’s happened, you have access to more funding than ever. You have people around you who are almost as smart as you, who can help advance your discoveries and shit.”

“Almost as smart?” Jane asked, cracking a smile.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “What? You’re pretty fucking smart.”

“So you are, Darcy. You do a good job hiding it.” Sniffing again and wiping the last of her tears away, she said, “Please don’t leave me. He left and… I just want someone to stay. I want _you_ to stay.”

Darcy felt like her stomach was made of lead. “I’m not leaving you. Okay? I never even applied for anything. The way you were treating me just made me feel like you didn’t want me around.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy. I do want you around. I need you here.”

“I don’t do much. Anyone can do what I’m doing.”

The other woman sighed. “You do _so much_. So much. No one could replace you. I just… need your support.”

Hearing Jane tell her that she was needed— _wanted_ —made Darcy’s chest ache. “I’m not leaving you, dude. But I do have to go home and see my parents soon. They are up my ass for real.”

“Okay.”

She blinked away the tears that were threatening to make themselves known. “That was easy. Thanks, boss-lady.” They sat in silence for a full minute before Darcy cleared her throat and said, “He didn’t want to leave you, Jane. You know that, right?” When Jane tilted her head down so Darcy couldn’t make out her expression, Darcy continued with, “I don’t think he had a choice. Or at least he didn’t see it that way. Bruce said the survivors from Asgard are living in Norway. He’ll be back here eventually.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It _means_ you need to talk to him when he does come back. His home is here now. Don’t you want to see if you two can’t… reconcile?”

“I don’t think that’s what he wants. He left.” Jane lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and weary. Heartbroken, Darcy thought. She’d hidden all this shit pretty well these past few weeks.

“You kinda broke up with him. He probably thought you didn’t want to see his face ever again. I think you need to be the one to swallow your pride and find him when he gets back.”

Jane frowned. “I thought… I thought he’d find me when we came back, when we reappeared. I thought…”

“Ahh,” Darcy said, pointing the sucker at her friend again. “That blows. You broke up with him and told him to leave you alone. So, he leaves you alone and you realize you didn’t want him to. That’s, like, the heartbreaking story of me and my boyfriend in my sophomore year. Choking on your own words is the fucking worst.”

Jane’s laugh was tinged with tears. “I can’t lose you, Darcy. You’re my best friend even though I know I haven’t been acting like it.”

It was hard to hold any kind of grudge against Jane when she was obviously hurting so much, even if she was hiding it very well. “You’re my best friend, too, bitch. I’m glad we hashed this out. Now, we need to find your man. Or find a way to get a message to him. If you call, I bet my left tit he’d come running.”

Jane giggled and shook her head. “Not your right tit?”

“My right tit is perfect. It’s always been my best tit. Perfect shape and firmness. My left tit could use a little improvement.” Darcy stood up and stretched. “Are we good, Janie-poo?”

“Are we? Do you forgive me?” she asked.

“Forgive you for being a lovesick, type A personality who can’t stand not being in control? Jane, there’s nothing to forgive. Now, I’m going to get a root beer. Do you want something?”

“No. I just want to finish coding this data. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“We’ll see,” Darcy said, narrowing her eyes at her friend before making her way to the vending machines down the hall.

It was a slow day. Not many people were around and the break room was empty. She bought a can of root beer from a vending machine on the far wall and stood in front of the bulletin board, reading the notices and announcements. Most of it didn’t apply to her, but it made her feel better to know what was going on outside the microcosm of the lab.

“Darcy?”

She turned around to see a smiling Sam Wilson in full gear, retracted metal wings and all. “Uh, yeah. Hi… uh, Sam, uh, Wilson. Falcon. Erm, what do I call you again?”

His grin widened. “Sam?” he said it like it was a question.

“Oh. _Oh_. Right, okay. Real name, then.”

“I think we all go by our real names around here. I’d feel ridiculous asking you to call me Falcon.”

“Well, I mean, if you insist,” she said, raising the can of soda as if toasting him.

Sam chuckled. “No, that’s weird.” He pointed at the bulletin board. “If you’re looking for a cat-sitter, I highly recommend Eva.”

There was a sheet of paper tacked to her right that had several strips at the bottom listing a number and name. The sheet above advertised pet-sitting services. “I’m too much of a nomad to be taking care of an animal. I’m surprised you have one with all the traveling you do.”

“Hence the cat-sitter.” He shrugged. “Okay, she’s also my girlfriend.”

Darcy nodded. “Ahh, you’re doing the duties of a good boyfriend and networking for your lady. Respect.”

“Well, I try.”

“Did you meet her when you asked her to cat sit? Because if you did, then I need a romantic comedy right now. Pseudo superhero is—”

“Pseudo? Hey!”

“Okay, okay, superhero is wondering what the purpose of it all is when he doesn’t have someone to come home to, so he gets a cat to keep him company. Little does he know, the cat will bring his true love into his life.” Darcy held out a hand. “Where’s my advance on this screenplay?”

“You mean your hush money to keep my personal business under wraps?”

“That works, too,” she agreed. “I accept all denominations of bills.”

Sam laughed and walked over to the soda machine to buy himself a drink. She turned back to the board right before he said, “So, how’d you meet Bucky?” His voice was too nonchalant for her to believe he wasn’t trying to be sneaky and pump her for info.

“I was moonlighting as a dominatrix and he answered the ad.”

Sam choked on his first drink from the can of Coke he’d just bought. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, wait, that was my _other_ screenplay,” she said. “We actually met when he carried my shit—Jane’s shit, actually—inside the day we got here. We keep running into one another. Why?”

“He’s a quiet guy. Keeps to himself. I promised a friend I’d look out for him.”

“So, what? You’re like his big brother and you want to vet his acquaintances?” she asked with a smile.

“Acquaintances, not friends?”

She nodded. “I don’t think I know him well enough to say we’re friends. I mean, we’ve had like four conversations.”

Sam put a hand on his hip. “Do you know who he is, Darcy?”

“Uh, he said his name is Bucky. Ex-military. Ex-farmer. Works with you and the Avengers.”

Nodding slowly, Sam said, “Right. Yeah.”

Darcy furrowed her brows. “Am I wrong?”

“No,” he replied, “you’re not. But I think you should probably consider him a friend. I’d venture to say he considers you a friend, even if he won’t admit it.”

“Oooo-kay?”

“Nice talking with you,” he said. “You need anything around here, you let us know.”

“Sure,” she said. After Sam had left, she finished her can of root beer. “Weird,” she muttered as she threw it in the trash.

 

* * *

 

“So, what’s Bucky’s story?” Darcy said, trying to sound like she wasn’t even that interested to begin with.

Wanda parted her lips as if she were going to answer the question and then pressed them together tightly. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know. What does he do around here? He told me that he used to work on a farm in Africa and that he had a herd of goats. That’s… different.”

Wanda nodded and gave Darcy a tentative smile. “Yeah, he, uh, he lived in Wakanda for a bit.”

“No shit?” she replied, lifting her brows. “I thought they were isolationists. Didn’t think they let just anybody in to babysit their goat herds or whatever.”

“They don’t. T’Challa knows Steve and Bucky; it was a favor to—” She stopped talking and pressed her lips together. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed what she’d been about to say. “Yeah, Bucky knows T’Challa.”

Darcy gave Wanda what she hoped was her you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look and said, “Oh, he just knows the King of Wakanda. No big, right?”

“Right,” Wanda said, smiling again. “I mean, I know T’Challa, too.”

“I’m starting to feel left out. You said Steve. Steve Rogers? Bucky knew Steve Rogers, too?”

“Yeah, of course. That’s…” Wanda sighed and her shoulders dropped. “Look, you should ask Bucky these questions. We’ve all got our pasts, you know. I’ve got mine just like he has his. I don’t really want to tell a story that isn’t mine to tell.”

“A story? I thought he was just some ex-military dude that came out of goat-herding retirement to help out Sam Wilson. Or at least that’s the impression he’s been giving me.”

“Well, that’s true. But you should ask Bucky.” Wanda stood up and stepped back from the table she’d been sharing with Darcy in the breakroom. Darcy had taken the opportunity to strike up a conversation with Wanda an hour ago when she’d seen the woman sitting alone. It couldn’t hurt to have friends, and Wanda was one of the friendlier people hanging around the building.

Darcy watched Wanda back away. “But for real, how did he know Captain America? Special ops or something?”

“Yeah, they… served together. Talk to Bucky about it. Really.”

“Bucky isn’t too interested in telling me about himself. I feel like he’s running defense on me when we have a conversation.”

Wanda nodded and took another step back. “Have a little patience.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Wanda.” Darcy’s mind went to the news articles from a couple of years back when someone blew up Vienna. There had been a bunch of pictures of the suspect on television, but they had been grainy. Supposedly, it had never been Bucky Barnes after all, but someone who had on a disguise to look like him. From what she could remember in the history books, her Bucky didn’t really look like _the_ Bucky Barnes of the Howling Commandos. Plus, he didn’t have a metal arm courtesy of HYDRA. It was just a little strange that Wanda got all squirrelly when Darcy asked about Bucky.

* * *

Darcy was somewhere between speed-walking and jogging to catch up with Bucky as he made his way across the parking lot toward a large warehouse they were using to store equipment and vehicles. She’d been looking for him for three days, but he had been in the wind since they’d sat outside that night.

In those three days, she had decided he didn’t really look like Bucky Barnes. She’d also decided she was insane for entertaining the thought for three reasons. One—Bucky Barnes was dead. Captain America had delivered the news to the media himself. There had even been a couple newsmagazine programs that did entire episodes about how he’d survived being held hostage twice and used as a weapon by a terrorist organization only to tragically die after being reunited with his best friend. Two—he very obviously did not have a crazy metal contraption for a left arm. Three—legends, historical and otherwise, didn’t go out of their way to spend time with her. They didn’t carry her bags and smile at her as if they cared. Thor was an exception only because he was head over heels for Jane and Darcy was in Jane’s orbit.

She opened her mouth to call out to him just as he stopped and turned around. Darcy bounced to an abrupt stop and gave him a sheepish smile. “Hi,” she said.

“Were you just chasing me?” His grin negated any accusatory tone in the question.

“Maybe a little bit. I haven’t seen you recently.”

“You were looking for me?”

“Were you dodging me?” she shot back.

“No, I wasn’t doing that, doll.” He adjusted his grip on a long case that looked like it might contain a telescope or a rifle. Something told Darcy he probably wasn’t stargazing.

She inhaled deeply as she finally caught her breath. “Good because it’d be even more awkward to ask if you want to get dinner with me if you were avoiding me.”

He took a step back. “Dinner?”

Darcy held up both her hands. “As friends. Look, I’m not delusional. I know you aren’t interested. But you said my Thai smelled good that day, so do you wanna grab something there one night?”

“I—You’re not… You’re not delusional…” He looked bewildered.

“Right. I’m not delusional about this,” she said as she wiggled a finger back and forth between them. “Whatever this is or isn’t.”

“I don’t know what this is,” Bucky admitted. “Do you?”

She laughed softly as she pushed her hair out of her face. “I know what it isn’t. So, what about dinner?”

“I don’t really… I don’t leave unless it’s a mission or… I mean, I don’t think—”

She cringed inside even though she tried her best to keep a straight face. Stupid, stupid girl, Darcy thought, thinking he’d ever go to dinner with you. “Hey,” she told him, holding up a hand. “Say no more. No explanations needed. Proceed with your… whatever you were doing. Sorry I interrupted—”

“Darcy,” he said, stopping the cascade of words escaping her mouth.

“What?”

“I’m not saying no. I just… I don’t know how to do this.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t know.”

“If I bring a goat with us, will you feel more comfortable?” she asked, schooling her expression so the question was said with absolute sincerity.

The bewildered look was replaced by a subtle smile as he turned to the side and chuckled. “I haven’t done anything like this in a long time.”

“I swear to god this isn’t a date. Again, not delusional.”

“Doll…”

“Wait, you aren’t talking about dating. Are you actually trying to say you’ve been working so hard that you haven’t gone out to dinner at a restaurant in a long time?”

Bucky ran his free hand through his hair. “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Dude, it’ll be great. It’s never busy and they really have the best food. You drive, I’ll pay.”

“I’ll pay,” he said, firmly.

“Okay, I’ll drive.”

“I’ll drive, too.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Then it’ll be like a date and I’ll start getting ideas.”

“I’ll drive,” he repeated. “And pay.”

“So bossy,” she told him with a wink as her mind raced with questions about whether he was flirting with her and if he actually meant anything by it. “Carry on with your…” Darcy pointed at the case. “With your very large gun or very small telescope.”

Bucky shook his head at her as he turned back toward the storage warehouse with a smile on his face.

“Meet me at the side door at seven tonight?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he called over his shoulder.

She turned around and walked back to the building with the biggest smile she’d had on her face in ages. Her cheeks actually hurt by the time she pushed open the door to the lab and told Jane that she had a life and a not-a-date so work was out of the question this evening.

 

* * *

 

It took a full forty-five minutes to decide on what to wear to dinner with the hottest guy in a hundred-mile radius. _Actually_ , she thought, he was probably the hottest guy in the country, but that was just her opinion. Darcy settled on her favorite pair of jeans with a scoop-neck shirt that showed off her chest to great advantage. The plunge, push-up bra underneath certainly helped with that as well. After curling her hair into loose waves, she slipped on a pair of flats and took the stairs down to the first floor.

When she pushed the side door open, Darcy was confronted with a sight that almost made her swallow her tongue. He was half-sitting, half-leaning against the front bumper of a candy-red Mazda Miata Roadster. The coupe was compact with generous curves and a spotless paint job. Bucky looked like temptation in his jeans and black leather jacket with his hair down.

“Wow. Hi. Hold on.” She ducked back inside, shut the door, and leaned against it. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she muttered. “Pull yourself together, bitch.” With that said, she yanked the door open and flashed Bucky a smile. “I had to collect myself,” she told him. “I was not prepared for this assault.”

He smiled at her and pushed himself off the bumper. “Has there been an assault?”

“Uh, yes. You are the assailant with this car and these looks you’re serving me. I was not mentally prepared. Where the hell did you get the car?”

“It was in storage. I filled out a requisition form.” He walked over to the passenger side. For a moment, Darcy thought he was going to let her drive and then she realized with even more disbelief that he was opening the door for her.

“Interesting,” she told him as she came closer. “Now I know what vehicle I’m asking for the next time I’m going on a grocery run.”

Bucky’s eyes tracked her as she walked around to stand with the open door between them. “Maybe I’ll let you drive on the way back,” he said.

Laughing, Darcy said, “We’ll see if you can stop me.”

“I wouldn’t even try,” he replied as she folded herself in the passenger seat. Darcy buckled her seat belt while he shut the door and walked around the front of the car. Could she just ask what his last name was? Was that weird or inappropriate when he’d already made it clear he wasn’t interested in talking about himself?

He couldn’t be Bucky Barnes, though. There wasn’t a cybernetic arm. Well, she’d never actually seen his arm because he was forever in a leather jacket or fatigues that covered his skin from the wrist up. Which was strange since it was June and hot as hell most days. No, Darcy thought, his hand wasn’t metal even if it did look a little off sometimes. What if… Had she lost her mind thinking that a supposedly dead man who played a pivotal role in history would actually give her the time of day? There was no way. Bucky Barnes was dead and had been for years.

She gave him directions to the Thai restaurant and watched him from the corner of her eye as he navigated the roads to get there. Darcy couldn’t quite get a handle on Bucky. One minute he’d open up to her with that smile, his eyes making her feel all gooey inside, and the next minute he was a blank slate with an inner world that she couldn’t even hope to gain access to. What was going on in that brain of his?

“How long has it been since you’ve gone out to dinner?” she asked, finally breaking the awkward silence inside the car.

“In a restaurant?”

“Yep.”

“Does takeout count?”

“No,” she said, laughing at how he was trying to split hairs.

He shifted just slightly away from her and pulled in a deep breath. His chest expanded and then fell as he blew the air out his nose. “A very long time.”

“Weeks, months, years?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Years.”

“Why?”

“Long story.”

She gathered her hair up in her hands, twisting it up into a loose bun. Leaning her head back, she trapped the knot of hair against the headrest so she could fan her hands over her neck and shoulders. “You’ve got a captive audience. Do tell.”

Bucky glanced over at her and then turned his gaze back to the road. She watched as he shifted his eyes back and forth for a few moments. He licked his lips and gave her a tight smile. “Can I get a pass?” he asked in a soft voice.

The look in his eyes made Darcy feel like a heel for even asking what she thought was an innocuous question. “You have an unlimited number of passes.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as his smile widened. Eyes back on the road, he said, “Thanks, doll. That means… more than I can explain.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a soft touch. Keep sweet-talking me and you can pretty much get out of answering all my questions.”

“I wish I could— I wish I could answer them.”

“Are you top secret?” she asked.

This made him chuckle. “I know you’re teasing me, but that’s closer to the truth than I want it to be.”

His answer made her stomach feel funny. Something was going on, but she wasn’t quite sure she had enough puzzle pieces to figure it out. She pointed at the little building set back from the road with a narrow parking lot in front. “Right here,” she told him. “Also, I hope you know I’m going to eventually bug the shit out of you until you tell me what you mean by that.” What if he _was_ Bucky Barnes? The thought felt so crazy it made her uncomfortable.

“I hope you do,” he said. “But how about not today?”

“Okay, that’s a deal, but only if you buy me dessert.”

Bucky parked. “You can have whatever you want,” he said before opening his door and levering himself out of the low-riding car.

After he shut the door, she smiled to herself as she unbuckled her seat belt. “What if what I want is your fine and unattainable ass?” she said to herself.

Just as her fingers touched the handle, he opened the passenger door for her and extended his right hand instead of his left. She wasn’t quite sure why she noticed such a small thing, but for some reason it stuck out to her. The left would have been the natural hand to offer to help her out of the vehicle, but he went out of his way to make sure it was the right. Darcy opened her mouth to ask him why his left hand looked a little off, but she didn’t know how to frame the question without sounding rude. Plus, he looked so nervous that she thought there was a real possibility he was going to bend over and throw up on her shoes.

“You okay, Bucky?”

“Outside of my comfort zone,” he said, forcing a nervous little smile.

“You wanna wait in the car and I’ll get takeout?”

“Doll,” he said, his voice half pleading and half admonishing.

“I’m serious. We can take it back to the breakroom.”

“No. I need to do this. I _want_ to do this.”

“I know what anxiety can do, dude. You don’t have to force yourself to do anything,” Darcy told him as she let him help her out of the passenger seat.

“I’m not. I’m right where I want to be.” He dropped her hand and shut the door.

“Uh, for future reference, if you’re trying _not_ to lead a girl on, then you should refrain from opening her car door and calling her doll and telling her you don’t want to be anywhere else than with her. These things in combination with all that,” she told him, waving her hand in front of him, “tends to fry a girl’s brain.”

He chuckled and dropped his gaze to the ground shyly. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Man, I really wish I knew what your deal is. You’ve gotta have this wild story. You should be walking around here like you’re hot shit with no less than twenty woman following behind you. Instead, you’re batting your perfect eyelashes like you’re shy while you slum it with me.”

He just shook his head and gestured toward the restaurant. “I’ll tell you one day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this not-a-date actually what they consider to be their first date when they look back years from now? Maybe! Thank you to all you lovely readers who have reached out to me and let me know that you're enjoying the fic and/or what you especially liked. Your feedback inspires me to write more.


	6. Chapter 6

> _”Honey, I forgot to mention I’m so entranced by you it hurts. I’m in love with the moment, to me fallin’, to me goin’.” - Khalid (Motion)_

It wasn’t so much the social interaction that made him anxious. He’d been to gatherings in Wakanda. He’d even dined with T’Challa and his family on occasion, usually when Shuri insisted he was too isolated and needed to actually converse with someone other than himself. But those had been dinners in T’Challa’s home, not in a public setting. Back then he was just focused on getting through each day, accepting that HYDRA wasn’t around the next corner to pull him back under those murky waters he’d lived in for so long. Wakanda and its people had been good to him. The isolation--the space--gave him a moment to breathe. It was something he hadn’t been able to do during those months bouncing around Eastern Europe before he hid in Bucharest. Those had been unsettled days, fraught with tension and worry over what would come next. He’d known the other shoe would drop; he just hadn’t known when.

But Wakanda—it had been a slice of heaven, a reprieve from the running, the hiding. Now he was thrust back into a world that was both so familiar, yet so foreign. He’d not even entertained the idea of feeling this way about a woman, much less the potential of a relationship beyond friends since the fall from the train. Those decades that followed were just a hodgepodge of blood-splashed images and clips that never seemed to line up in chronological order, no matter how hard he tried to pin them down. His time in Bucharest had been too precarious, and his moment to finally exhale in Wakanda had been more about accepting that he was one of the victims of those bloody memories, not the architect. There had been no thoughts of how it would feel to press his lips against a pliant mouth or what the skim of soft hands would feel like against his skin.

Well, he hadn’t had time for those thoughts until he’d walked out of the building and saw her standing in the circular drive with a bright red cast on her arm and the dogged determination to get a suitcase half her weight out of the back of the vehicle she’d arrived in. He shouldn’t think about her as much as he did; Bucky knew it was a mistake. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. She looked at him like he was whole, like he was something more than a damaged old man who was still learning how to navigate this new world. She looked at him like she thought about lips on lips and skin against skin, too.

Darcy did the talking when they entered the door while Bucky tried to pull himself out of his own head and slow his breathing. After leaving the small farm in Wakanda, he’d found comfort in the structure of battle. He’d also found it in the rigors of this pseudo-military lifestyle. It was familiar to him from his time in the service and even more so during his time with HYDRA. There was peace in that, too. This, though, felt like jumping off a cliff without a parachute. He was in freefall with this dark-haired woman who had big blue eyes and a smart mouth that he’d give pretty much anything to kiss just once.

Darcy followed the hostess and he followed her to a small table for two in the back corner of the restaurant. “Is this okay?” Darcy asked when the hostess left them alone.

It wasn’t until that moment he realized all the talking she’d done when they’d walked through the door had been an effort to get a table out of the way so he could have his back to a wall. “Yes,” he told her, flexing the fingers of his left hand inside the glove he’d taken to wearing when he was outside his room.

“My best friend from high school had a brother who did two tours in Afghanistan. He, uh, had PTSD when he got back. Public places were difficult for him.”

Bucky wanted to tell her that it wasn’t that. Well, it was, but it was so much more. It was all the changes to his world since the War. It was trying to figure out how to live now that he’d finally figured out how to forgive. “It’s… perfect.”

That earned him a wide smile from her as she sat down at the table, giving him the chair with a view of the doorway. Did she know that he sometimes thought about being attacked in a public place like this? Did she know since he’d left Wakanda that he looked over his shoulder when in public, wondering if HYDRA would come for him still? Or was it just by accident that she’d given him exactly what he’d needed?

Bucky sat down, trying to ease his stiff movements to no avail. Does she know who you are, he thought. God, he hoped she didn’t. If she did, then she surely wouldn’t be sitting so close he could imagine the heat of her legs against his when she shifted her ass in the seat. He swallowed and watched their waiter place two glasses of ice water on the table. “Can I get either of you something to drink?”

“Water is fine,” Darcy said. Bucky nodded his agreement and watched the man turn to leave.

“You okay? We can still get takeout and eat back at the building,” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

Bucky shook his head. “I’m fine. This is… good.” With a sigh, he added, “Am I that obvious?”

Darcy just grinned. “No, I’m just good at reading people.”

“Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better,” he said with a self-deprecating smile.

She opened the menu and turned it around so she could place it in front of him. “The cashew with chicken is the best. Or maybe pad thai is the best. I usually go back and forth between the two.”

“You wanna share?” Bucky asked.

She lit up, and he wished everything he said to her would get that kind of reaction. “Seriously? Hell yes, I want to share. You’re the best not-a-date I’ve ever had.”

Bucky suspected Darcy probably had lots of real dates better than the half-assed dinner he was on with her. If he had bigger balls, he’d tell her it was a date. No, he thought. If he had any kind of confidence that this would actually work out when she discovered his past, then he’d tell her it was definitely a date and he was definitely intent on kissing her. Unfortunately, she’d probably run for the hills once she found out he was a former assassin who’d tried—and nearly succeeded—in bringing down the US government on behalf of a terrorist organization. He couldn’t even show her his fucking hand, let alone his arm.

“You go on a lot of these not-a-dates?” he asked her.

“All the time,” she said. “It’s the story of my life.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but the thought of her sitting here with another man made his gut twist in a very unpleasant way. “I’m sorry,” he admitted. “I’m a little off this evening. This is… out of my comfort zone.”

“No pressure, dude. It’s just dinner and home. We can leave whenever you want. I won’t even ask why you want to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Bucky told her. “But I appreciate the offer.”

The waiter came, and Darcy graciously told the man that they wanted an order of cashew chicken and pad thai. When he’d left them alone again, she leveled her gaze on Bucky and said, ”I never thanked you for listening to me a couple nights ago when I told you about my parents.”

Waving her apology away, he said, “Don’t thank me.” Don’t thank me because I’m not who you think I am. If you knew, then you wouldn’t be here, he thought.

“Seriously, Bucky. You’re one of the reasons I’m still sane and still here. I was on the fucking edge when I showed up.”

He took a sip of his water. “I could tell.”

“Jane is just… frustrating. I mean, I love her. She and I have been through so much, but…” Darcy sighed and propped her chin up on the palm of her hand. “She has a way of making a person feel unappreciated even if she doesn’t mean to.”

“Sounds like you’ve been putting up with that for a while.”

“Oh, for a few years,” she told him a wistful smile. “She and I talked recently and we’re good again, I think. She’s going through a lot right now and I don’t think she knows how to deal with some things like her relationship, or lack thereof, with Thor. She misses him more than I thought. More than I do.”

She looked beautiful sitting across from him, her hair framing her face and her eyes focused on him and only him. It made Bucky’s heart beat just a little bit harder in his chest. “ _Someone_ told me you laid Thor out with a blast from a Taser a few years ago.”

Darcy winked at him, her smile growing. “That person wouldn’t be me, would it? Am I giving myself a reputation?”

“You and Bruce both. And if you’re getting a rep, then I’m sure it’s a good one.”

“You, sweet-talker, you.”

“When are you going to see your parents?” he asked, grasping for a thread of conversation that didn’t involve them talking about him.

“This coming weekend. Maybe leave Friday morning and come back Sunday evening. I tried to talk to Jane the Brain into going, but she was too immersed in Pym Particles and black holes and whatever else.”

“They live in Maine?”

“Yeah, about four hours from here.” She sat back and tucked her dark hair behind her ears. “I want to see them, but… I’m… I don’t know. I don’t want to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “I’m just being stupid.”

He leaned forward and had to fight the urge to reach out and place his right hand on top of hers. Her pale little hand was lying on the table, fingers curled beneath, a simple silver ring on her index finger. Perfect and effortless and unobtainable. “Why do you think that?” Bucky asked.

“Well, I don’t want to deal with my mom’s nagging. I mean, she’s been even worse than usual lately. I don’t want to endure the obligatory family dinner in which we all talk about how great Adam is.” When Bucky lifted his brows, she said, “Adam’s my older brother.”

“Did he…. you know?” he asked her.

“Go poof like us? Yeah. He and his daughter did. His wife and his son didn’t. My dad didn’t. My mom did.”

“How’s that working out?”

Darcy shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. Have you ever avoided something so hard that you feel like a piece of shit and then that just makes you want to avoid it even more because if you actually face it, then you have to acknowledge that you are a terrible person?”

Her question made Bucky’s chest ache. “Yeah, I have. But I don’t think you qualify as a piece of shit, doll. Far from it.”

“I’ve been avoiding my family and talking about what happened. My dad and my sister-in-law and my nephew are, like, five years older than they were a couple months ago. Or… fuck, I don’t know. Is that the right way to think of it? Or is it that I lost five years?”

“I think we lost five years,” he said softly, picking at his napkin on the table.

“God, this sucks. My mom called me crying right after we… got back. She was confused and didn’t believe my dad when he told her that she’d been gone. She said he looked different. And, I’ve been, like, hardcore avoiding Facetiming or anything because that makes it real. Right? If I just keep pretending like it didn’t happen then it didn’t happen.”

He gave her a tight smile. “I don’t think it works that way.”

Darcy laughed, but it was bitter and filled with sadness. “Yeah, I know. I wish it did, though.”

The waiter interrupted the conversation with their two entrees and two extra plates. Bucky watched as Darcy divided up the dinners, giving him more of both meals despite his protests.

“I’ll just steal food off your plate if I want more,” she told him.

His mind tripped over thoughts of her lips and tongue, what it would be like to share a fork and if he would be able to taste her on it if they did. It was a dangerous path to let himself go down. The day before he’d seen her with a Cherry Coke, but he’d slipped around the corner before she’d seen him. Now all he could think about was the sweetness of that flavor on her pink lips.

“Did you miss anything while you were gone?”

“No,” he said, watching her dig into the noodles on her plate before doing the same.

“Did you leave behind family?”

He said, “No,” even though his mind went straight to Steve.

“Getting answers from you is like pulling teeth, hot stuff.”

He chuckled, his eyes focused on his plate. “Ain’t much to say.” It was a lie. He had so much that he wanted to tell her, but he knew it would end whatever this was. And right now this strange little friendship with a pretty girl who looked at him like he might be someone almost normal was what was keeping him going.

“I’m going to venture to say you’re more interesting than me,” she replied before going back to her food.

He did the same, savoring the flavorful meal piled high on his plate. For a moment, he forgot himself and where he was. It became about the food, but mostly about _her_. When Darcy’s knee brushed his as she shifted in her chair, Bucky inhaled and gripped the fork in his right hand. He let up when he felt the metal of the handle bend. She was too busy eating to notice.

He watched her tilt her head sideways and use her tongue to coax the noodles in her mouth. She had no idea what she was doing to him. She couldn’t possibly. She was just having dinner with a friendly person she’d encountered in the building she worked in. Bucky… Well, he, on the other hand, couldn’t stop himself from constructing fantasies of a life not meant for him when he looked across the table at her.

“Why are you here?” he asked her. The awkward question seemed to sit on the table between them.

Darcy stopped eating, drew her brows together, and gave him a confused smile. “Uh, because I’m too chicken to eat alone in a restaurant and I like talking with you?”

“But why me?”

This seemed to confuse her further as she gave him a little laugh under her breath. “I don’t know, dude. You seem pretty fucking cool. Why not?”

He put his head down, unable to maintain eye contact with her for much more than a couple of seconds. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t,” Darcy told him. “No apologies necessary. We all have our hang-ups, right?”

“Right. But I’m sorry all the same,” he murmured, finding the courage to glance up and watch her push the noodles of her pad thai around. Bucky cleared his throat. “I, uh, ruined dinner.”

She laughed again, but this time it reached her eyes. “No way. This is still delicious and you’re still pretty cool. It was just an awkward moment. I have them all the time. Yesterday I was on my way to the bathroom and ran right into Bruce when I turned the corner.”

Bucky smiled at her. “You trying to make me feel better?”

She didn’t answer his question, but she did say, “So, I’m kinda short. This put my nose, like, right into this belly button. I put my hands up to stop the momentum or whatever. If my nose is in his belly button, where do you think my hands ended up?”

Raising his brows, Bucky said, “I’m going to guess in a very uncomfortable spot.”

“Uh, yeah, right on his green Hulky jewels.” She took a bite of her food, washed it down with a drink of water, and added, “I’m pretty sure I almost grabbed his nuts. Which is pretty much one of the most ridiculous things that have happened in my life. And there have been some ridiculous things.”

“Tell me about them,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Hulky Bruce’s nuts? I didn’t actually cop a feel. I mean, what the fuck, dude?”

Bucky chuckled and shook his head. “No. These other ridiculous things that have happened to you.”

“Right. _Right_. That would make more sense. Are you sure you want to hear my stories?”

“Absolutely,” Bucky told her.

“Okay, well, I guess the first ridiculous shit that happened was my decision to take an internship with Jane. I didn’t realize two-hundred pounds of muscle was going to drop out of the sky while we were working one night.”

 

* * *

 

“Can I ask you a question?”

Bucky sat his empty glass down on the table and looked up at her face. They had finished their dinner while she told him about meeting Thor and what came after. Now, they were waiting on her dessert. She’d asked for their homemade ice cream, and Bucky was pleased because as rocky as the evening had started, he didn’t want it to end.

“Sure,” he said. “What’s your question.”

“What’s your last name?”

The smile on Bucky’s face crumbled and fell away as his gut twisted. “I, uh…”

“Was that a weird question? Sorry.” She fluttered her hands in the air before tucking her hair behind her ears.

“No, it’s fine. I just…”

“It’s just… You’re a bit of a mystery and Sam and Wanda said I should ask you… well, about you. And I don’t even know your last name.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “I… It’s a long story. You really don’t want to know.”

She nodded. “Okay. Sure. I’m… sorry I asked. I mean, I don’t want to make you feel like you have to explain—”

“Doll,” he said, interrupting. “Please don’t. I want to tell you, but it really is a long story. Much longer than we have time for tonight.”

“Are you telling me that you want to have dinner again?” she asked.

The way she just let him off the hook like that made Bucky want to tell her everything, fear of rejection be damned. “Of course. You’re the best company around here.”

She was almost beaming at him, her eyes sparkling like she’d had a glass or two of wine when he knew she’d only had water. Was that all because of him? Was he responsible for making her feel that good when he hadn’t even expended much effort? How was it even possible?

“Don’t give me any ideas,” she teased.

Bucky just chuckled and shook his head. The waiter chose that moment to reappear with a white ceramic bowl that had two generous scoops of ice cream in it. After the waiter left, she dipped her spoon in and took a bite and then extended the spoon across the table. “Have some,” she told him.

“No, doll, that’s your dessert,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“Come on, try some.” When he didn’t make a move, she rolled her eyes and took the spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “Mmm,” she told him, fluttering her eyes closed as her lips wrapped around the handle of the spoon.

Bucky clenched his left hand into a fist under the table. “Good?” he asked, surprised at the husky quality to his voice.

“Mmm hmm,” she agreed, licking the back of the spoon as she removed it from her mouth. After another bite, she held a full spoon out to him. The ice cream looked like it might be vanilla, but he wasn’t sure. “You know you want to,” she whispered.

“I can’t,” he said.

Darcy just raised her brows.

“I shouldn’t,” Bucky said, licking his lower lip.

“What’s going to happen if you do? The end of the word?”

He chuckled. “Maybe.”

“It’ll be a great end of the world if the last thing you remember is ice cream.”

She had a point there. She also knew his resistance had weakened because she extended her arm, bringing the spoon within three inches of his lips. “Doll,” he said, glancing from it to her smiling eyes.

“Better hurry before it drips all over,” she told him. A dollop of melted ice cream was hanging precariously from the tip.

Bucky swallowed and glanced at her face before leaning forward and parting his lips so he could slip the spoon in his mouth. The cool sweetness melted on his tongue as he pulled back and released it. Darcy was watching him with parted lips and a heated look that made his stomach flip over.

“It’s good,” he told her. “Delicious.”

“I’ll share,” Darcy said, taking another bite and putting her lips and tongue right where his had been a moment before.

“No,” he said with a smile.

“Yes,” she replied, pushing the bowl a few inches closer to him with the spoon sticking out of the top. “Go on.”

It was one of those rare moments in which the world receded and fell away. It was just him and her and a bowl of ice cream between them. The spoon scraped against the porcelain of the bowl as he scooped up a melting glob. It tasted better than anything he’d had in a long time.

Replacing the spoon, he pushed the bowl back to her. They took turns until the dessert was gone, neither of them saying a word.

“Next time you’re getting your own,” she teased him.

“Thanks for sharing,” he whispered, licking the corner of his mouth where he could feel a bit of stickiness. He hoped he hadn’t dropped anything in his beard.

Darcy narrowed her eyes at him. “Sometimes I think you’re oblivious to your power and other times I think you know exactly what the fuck you’re doing.”

“What power?” he asked.

“I guess this is one of those oblivious moments,” she said.

He smiled. “What am I doing?”

“Being frustratingly hot,” she told him when the waiter dropped the check down on the corner of the table. Bucky saw her reach for it, but his reflexes were much faster. “Hey,” she said, “I’m the one that invited you.”

She liked him. Darcy wasn’t the kind of woman who played hard to get. That wasn’t to say she was easy to get, just that she didn’t seem like the type to play with his mind. Bucky could see that she liked him, but he could also see that she wasn’t going to take this any further. Maybe if he went out on a limb and asked her on a real date then she’d consider it. He didn’t have the balls to do that, though. So, he’d have to be happy with flirting just a little bit and a good dinner with a friend.

One of the fifties in his pocket covered dinner and left enough for a very nice tip. As they walked across the small parking lot to the borrowed Roadster, Bucky said, “Thanks for this. It was… great.”

“It was just dinner.” She leaned against the bumper of the car and said, “Do you think I could slip this out of the garage and take it to my parents’ place this weekend?”

“Maybe if you fill out a requisition form.”

“Where are those?”

He smiled as he stepped up to stand in front of her. “I’ll help you fill it out.”

“Aren’t you just the nicest guy ever.” After a moment’s pause, she scrunched her nose up. “Does it make me a horrible person if I’m dreading this family weekend?”

“No,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “My mom is trying to set me up this guy I went to high school with. He still lives down the street.”

Bucky’s stomach dropped at the thought of some other man sitting across the dinner table from her like he’d just done. Would she share her ice cream with this other guy? Would he make her smile like she’d smiled at him this evening? Wispy tendrils of jealousy slipped through his thoughts as he considered the very real possibility—probability—that she’d eventually find a man, whether it was this guy her mother was suggesting or another, and it wouldn’t be him.

“I’m _so_ not interested, but my mom is the absolute worst with stuff like that. She wants me to be more like my brother. Married, stable job, a couple kids.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, his voice hushed.

She was looking at the pavement between their feet but glanced up when he asked the question. “No. I’d probably suffocate.”

For some strange reason, her answer loosened a tightness he hadn’t realized had taken over his chest in the past minute or two. “You’ll be okay,” he assured her. “It’s just a weekend.”

She pushed herself off the bumper and said, “You’re right. Three days, two nights. I just gotta put on my game face.”

“Game face?” he asked, opening the passenger door for her.

Instead of walking around to slip into the seat, she sauntered over to the driver’s door and opened it. “Sure. The face that says I love my life and I’m super awesome even if that is a little bit of a fib right now.” She flashed him that adorable smile and dropped down in the driver’s seat.

“Son of a bitch,” Bucky muttered to himself, unable to keep the smile off his face. It looked like Darcy was driving them home. Oddly enough, her leaving him there, looking like an idiot as he held the passenger door open for her—well, it didn’t feel nearly as bad as he thought it should. It just made him like her that much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy's starting to wonder about his identity and if there might be more to his story than he's letting on. Will an internet search reveal some secrets soon? Hmmm...


	7. Chapter 7

> _”What you want from me, baby, don’t you know you have? Oh, I’ll keep your dreams, babe, crashing, waste, or sad.” - Rhye (Needed)_

“So, did I apologize for almost smacking your nuts a couple of days ago?” Darcy asked the very tall, very green, and only somewhat intimidating man standing next to his oversized desk.

Bruce laughed and waved away her apology. “It’s okay. Happens all the time. Hazard of being so tall.”

“Is it, though? I mean, do people just go around smacking your junk?”

He scrunched up his face. “Okay, no. I was trying to make you feel less embarrassed.”

“No, no, please. I can handle the full brunt of my embarrassment. Don’t protect me,” she said, before burying her face in her hands.

“Darcy, it’s fine.” Bruce used the tip of his index finger to pat her shoulder.

She looked up at him, suddenly remembering why she’d sought him out. “Hey, you know Bucky, right? Long hair, beard, leather jacket, amazing butt?”

Bruce laughed nervously as he sat down heavily in his chair. “Sure. Yeah. What about him?”

“What’s his deal?”

“Uh, deal? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Just… how’d he start working here or whatever.”

Bruce tilted his head at her. “Don’t you think you should ask him?”

“I kinda have and he’s kinda evasive.”

“Try again. He’s been through a lot, from what I hear. I mean, he just lost Steve after everything we just—” Bruce abruptly stopped and pressed his lips together.

“Steve?” Her thoughts immediately went to Steve Rogers as she remembered that conversation with Wanda. It’s not like Dr. Banner and Wanda would throw out the name Steve and not mean Rogers, right?

“Just ask him again, Darcy. It’s not my place.”

“That’s what Wanda said, too. I’m beginning to think you’re both keeping some secrets for him. Who _is_ he?”

“You know, I don’t think it’d be that hard for you to figure it out if you wanted to,” Bruce replied.

“Right. Right,” she agreed. “Google it is.”

 

* * *

 

Darcy felt like an absolute idiot as she sat at her desk and scrolled through picture after picture. Most of the photos were grainy, black and white affairs. Despite the poor quality, the man standing there with his arm around Steve Rogers’ shoulders didn’t look much like the man she’d shared her dessert with less than twenty-four hours ago. Then again, the bone structure was similar and the eyes were pretty dead on. It was the hair and the beard that threw her off and maybe that was the way he wanted it. Bucky Barnes was supposed to be _dead_ , though.

“Maybe it’s his… grandson or something,” she whispered.

Jane leaned in to look over Darcy’s shoulder. “I don’t know. Looks a lot like him. Steve Rogers was frozen for decades and so was he. Right?”

“Right. But he died over two years ago. Or… seven years ago. Fuck, the missing five years is really messing with my head. This doesn’t make sense. It _has_ to be his grandson.”

“Didn't Bruce put you on this track? He had to have known what you’d find. He probably _wanted_ you to find this.”

Darcy shook her head. “This is weird. Hold on, I need to refresh my memory.”

She spent the next two hours reading everything she could find about James Buchanan Barnes, his friendship with Steven Grant Rogers, his military career, and his untimely supposed death just before the war ended. There was less reliable information on his time with HYDRA, but a few articles went into the basics—that he’d been brainwashed into working for the same terrorist organization that had nearly killed him back in the forties, that he’d finally defected and eventually was framed for the bombing in Vienna before his second death at the hands of a lone terrorist. Many of the results were conspiracy theory sites that maintained his recent death had been a lie just like his first had been.

“Some of these sites say he doesn’t have a grave. I mean, he was probably cremated, right? Just because there isn’t a grave doesn’t mean there is an international lie about your apparent second death,” she told Jane.

Jane looked up from her computer. “Huh,” she replied before turning back to her work.

“Jaaaaaaane,” Darcy said, dragging her boss’s name out into a whine. “You’re not helping here.”

Shrugging, Jane said, “Maybe you should just ask him.”

“What? I just go up to him and say, ‘Hey dude, are you over a hundred and looking good for your age because you went all freeze pop like Captain America or do you bear an uncanny resemblance to your war hero grandfather?’ No fucking way. I don’t even think Bucky Barnes _had_ kids.”

“They kept that hush-hush back then if it was out of wedlock.”

“Oh, for god’s sake. I definitely can’t ask him now. What if he is the grandson and doesn’t even know who his grandfather was.” Darcy propped her elbows on her desk and dropped her face into her open hands. “Maybe I should just forget I saw all this.”

Jane snorted.

“What? Share your commentary with the class, Jane.”

Jane said, “I don’t think you’re very good at dropping things,” with raised brows.

“Whatever,” Darcy muttered, looking through her spread fingers at the computer monitor in front of her. James Barnes was a handsome guy. Clean-cut, really hot in that uniform, had mischievous eyes. Not exactly her type, but she got the appeal. The guy she’d been lusting after since she’d arrived had wary eyes and wasn’t nearly so clean-cut. The more she stared at the pictures, the more the resemblance seemed a bit too much, though. She sat there, face in hands, and tried to decide if it was a good idea to bring the question up when she saw him next.

She was still undecided when the door opened. Darcy looked up, the greeting on the tip of her tongue dying when she saw Bucky standing there looking pretty much edible in black cargo pants and a leather jacket over his matching T-shirt. “Hey,” he said, eyes going from her to Jane and back again.

“Hey,” she replied, fumbling to minimize the web browser on her screen even though he didn’t have a view of her monitor.

Bucky walked over and lifted a leg to halfway sit on the corner of her desk. He definitely didn’t look like he was over a hundred years old. “Thanks for dinner yesterday,” he murmured, his voice pitched only for her ears, though Darcy was pretty sure Jane could still hear it.

“Hey, you paid. I should be thanking you.”

He smiled. “Wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for you convincing me.”

When he was right there in front of her, it was hard to think about what she’d just learned. Her mind was too focused on his nearness and the way he looked at her like he couldn’t see anything and the subtle woodsy scent of his soap or cologne or _something_ that made her want to crawl inside his shirt. “It was all my pleasure, I assure you,” she told him with a little grin.

Bucky leaned forward, resting his forearm on his leg. Darcy looked down at his thick thigh and the veins on the back of his right hand. The man had muscles everywhere. “I gotta go on a mission and we might be gone a few days.” The hope building up in her chest that he was there to ask her out deflated at his admission. “I wanted to wish you good luck with your family in case I don’t get back before you leave on Friday.”

The thoughtfulness of him being there and thinking of her knocked Darcy back on her proverbial heels. “I—I, uh, wow… Thank you.”

“Maybe we can grab some dinner when you get back?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,” she said. “I’m not sharing my ice cream again, though.”

He chuckled and stood up. “I’ll share mine,” he said as he backed away.

“See you around, Bucky. Be careful on the mission.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a nod of his head before he opened the door and left.

A few seconds ticked by before Jane said, “Wow. Have you two had sex yet?”

“I wish,” Darcy muttered, blowing out the breath she’d been holding in her lungs. “I don’t think that’s in the cards, though. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean anything by… that thing he does when he makes me feel like I’m on fire because all his attention is on me. Pretty sure that’s just… nothing. He’s just… being nice.”

“Whatever you say,” Jane replied.

“Do you think he looks like Captain America’s best friend Bucky Barnes?”

Jane shrugged. “Yeah, but like you said—could be related.”

Darcy sat back in her chair. “When I talked to Bruce, he said he’s been through a lot and then said something about him losing Steve after all this. Why would Bucky Barnes’ grandson be so broken up about Captain America? I mean, Bruce made it seem like it was personal.”

“Maybe he was like an uncle to him. You know, his grandfather was best friends with Steve so Steve reconnects with Bucky’s family when he was found.”

Nodding at Jane’s solid reasoning, Darcy said, “Okay, yeah. That—that sounds like it might be true. Makes sense. Because him being a hundred-year-old man with _that_ body makes zero sense. Did you see his butt when he turned around?”

“Darcy,” Jane admonished.

“What?” Darcy asked. “I want to bite it.”

 

* * *

 

It took twenty-eight minutes. From the first minute to the very last, Darcy imagined a security unit busting down her door and confiscating her laptop. She imagined being escorted out of the building and physically thrown toward the curb out front. Jane probably wouldn’t even see the whole thing play out because she was too immersed in her research. She was as surprised as anyone when after less than half an hour on the phone with an old friend, she was sitting there with a file folder on her desktop that looked somewhat ominous.

 

**Barnes, James Buchanan**

 

She’d illicitly obtained it by calling up a friend she hadn’t spoken to in years. Patrick worked for a cybersecurity firm, and he had surprisingly few qualms about walking Darcy through the process of accessing files on Nick Fury’s precious server by creating a backdoor through the wifi network she was already logged into. He’d assured her if she followed the steps he’d outlined that she wouldn’t be caught unless they were specifically looking. Fury seemed like a paranoid guy, so Darcy thought it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he had someone looking for an insider like her.

She scooted off her couch and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her coffee table. “Okay, just… click on it,” she whispered to herself, staring at the folder on her desktop. Darcy knew she was probably being silly. She’d open the file and find the information she’d already read on the internet, just with more detail. And she’d find that James Barnes had an illegitimate son with some old flame before he was shipped off Europe during the war. And that son had a son who looked surprisingly like his handsome grandfather. Good genes, you know. Obviously, that grandson wanted to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps when Captain America showed up and took him under his wing.

However, a little voice in the back of her brain wasn’t buying that perfectly reasonable explanation. There wasn’t a file on any other Barnes. No junior, no the third. No Bucky Whatever. Just that one file. And if this grandson were working with what was left of the Avengers, wouldn’t he have a file just like Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff and even just like Darcy herself? Her file was almost non-existent—a copy of her passport, her criminal record that had one arrest from grad school that she still thought was complete bullshit, and a list of her associations with known players like Jane and Thor.

But there was only one Barnes file and it was on her desktop, taunting her with all the secrets within it. Darcy took a deep breath and opened the file. Instead of finding a long list of files, she found three folders and a PDF just below them.

 

**1917 - 1945  
** 1945 - 2014 (WS)  
2014 - current  
Barnes_Dossier.pdf 

 

“Oh my god,” she muttered, hovering the cursor over the dossier.

 

* * *

 

Jane wasn’t in the lab, so Darcy found herself banging on the woman’s door at half past midnight, her laptop clutched in her hand.

“Darcy, what are you—” Jane said as she pulled the door open.

“I need to talk,” Darcy said. “This is really, really fucked up.” She pushed her way past Jane and sat the laptop on the small kitchenette by the fridge just to the left of the entry.

Jane shut the door. “I need to get some sleep and so do you. We have a full day tomorrow with the—”

“He’s _the_ Bucky Barnes, Jane,” Darcy interrupted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s over a hundred and he’s Captain America’s best friend. And why the _fuck_ is he going out to dinner with me when he’s _that_ guy?”

Jane held out her hands and walked over to the table. “What are you talking about?”

Darcy opened the laptop and turned it toward her. “You better sit down when you read that. I can’t believe they kept this shit so hush-hush, but I guess it was to protect him.”

“Protect who?”

“Bucky,” Darcy told her. “God, he told me that he was working on a farm in Africa for the past couple years. He didn’t even lie. It makes so much sense now. That’s why Wanda and Bruce wouldn’t say anything. And Sam being all weird about the two of us talking. What the _fuck_.” She sat down in the chair opposite Jane and put her head between her knees as her friend read the PDF file that contained a timeline of events from 1945 into current-day.

“He’s an assassin?” Jane asked.

“He was brainwashed,” Darcy corrected. “But yes, technically he was an assassin for HYDRA.”

“Oh shit,” Jane said. Darcy looked up at Jane’s wide eyes. She was no doubt reading the list of known assassinations credited to Bucky Barnes during his time with the terrorist group. “He killed Howard and Maria Stark. And… he killed—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Darcy said. “It’s messed up.”

“Is he safe to be around?”

The question was jarring to Darcy. She opened her mouth to answer in the affirmative before realizing that Jane’s very reasonable inquiry had never occurred to her. Of course, he was safe. She’d spent so much time alone with him without feeling a shred of fear or danger. “What?” she asked her friend. “Of course. Yes. Why would you even say that?”

“Well, this looks really bad, Darcy.”

“Keep reading. I _knew_ the left hand looked weird. Don’t they have material that looks like skin now? That’s why he’s always wearing that fucking leather jacket.”

Jane pursed her lips and kept scrolling through the timeline that included the Sokovia Accords bombing and ended with Bucky’s extended stay in Wakanda. Darcy chewed on a hangnail and watched as Jane’s gaze shifted back and forth across the screen. “They have that kind of technology?”

“What?”

Jane’s eyes were wide. “The technology in Wakanda.” She sighed. “I’d do anything to get my hands on— Hey, do you think maybe Bucky could put in a word for us? I mean, they never let outsiders in to—”

“Jane! Focus! I didn’t show you this so you could go all gooey-eyed over cryo tech or whatever you’re talking about.”

“Actually, I was referring to the ability to reach in and modify triggers in a brain. It’s not my area of study, but if they can do that, then imagine what else they have.”

Darcy stood up and paced Jane’s small kitchen. “He’s Bucky fucking Barnes,” she muttered. “He was captured, tortured, brainwashed, used as an assassin for, like, the _worst_ terrorist organization. When he finally snaps out of it, he hid for two years because he knew they’d come after him and then he gets the blame for a bombing that he didn’t do. And _then_ Tony Stark tries to kill him for something he didn’t even choose to do and, and—”

“Darcy,” Jane said. “Slow down.”

“This is very upsetting to me,” she told her friend. “Like, super fucking upsetting.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

Darcy sat back down. “Why is he even talking to me?”

“Because he likes you?” Jane said, the comment vacillating between a statement and a question.

“Oh no,” Darcy said with a little laugh that was lacking any humor at all. “I would be willing to buy that if he was just a lonely, run-of-the-mill, ex-military dude who wanted to chip in and help out the Avengers. Guys like _that_ don’t talk to _me_.”

Jane furrowed her brow as she scrolled through Bucky’s file again. “Guys like what?”

“Important guys.”

“Darcy, don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not. I’m no one. He’s… he’s… I don’t know.” She ran a hand roughly through her hair. “Shit! How am I going to talk to him without spilling the beans that I completely invaded his privacy and hacked into the servers to get his restricted file?”

“Wait, you hacked into what?” Jane closed the laptop. “Darcy, if you get us kicked—”

“I think we’re safe. And if I get found out, I’ll say it was just me. I mean, it _was_ just me.” She bent over and hit her forehead on the table three times. “Fuck, I kinda wish I hadn’t looked. No wonder he looks so sad sometimes. No wonder he looked like he was going to have an anxiety attack when we got to the restaurant. No fucking wonder.”

“Just tell him.”

Darcy lifted her head up and looked at Jane. “I _can’t_. How do I just bring this shit up in convo? Oh, I stumbled across a succinct summary of the low points of your life. It was a real fucking bummer. Also, I was wondering why you’re wasting your important-ass time on me?”

“Maybe he likes that you don’t know. Maybe he just wants to be normal.”

Darcy opened her mouth to respond but nothing came out. Jane had a point. He hadn’t told her much of anything about himself and maybe that was for a reason. Maybe he liked that she didn’t know about his past. Maybe he just wanted someone to talk to who wasn’t going to judge him. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized something she should have thought of already. “He lost his best friend a couple of months ago. Ah, fuck. That sucks.”

“Oh,” Jane replied. “Yeah, Steve Rogers died in that fight.”

“Yeah. How am I going to keep my mouth shut around him? I can’t tell him I know all this.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?”

“That he’ll stop talking to me,” Darcy replied without any forethought.

Jane raised her brows. “Mmm.”

“What? I like him.”

“Still?”

She narrowed her eyes at Jane. “What do you mean, ‘still?’ Yes, bitch, still. I mean, I can read between the lines of that dossier. He’s a good guy. He’s trying.”

“I guess so,” Jane replied. “He was pretty flirty with you when he came into the lab earlier today.”

“Do you think that was flirting? I mean, maybe he’s just… nice. Maybe his flirty-meter is messed up.”

“Pretty sure he likes you,” Jane said.

“That makes me feel weird,” Darcy replied, wrapping her arms around her midsection.

Chuckling, Jane asked, “Why?”

“Because I really want him to like me and that makes me feel stupid because he’s him and I’m just me.”

 

* * *

 

She was sitting on the concrete with her back resting against the building when the jet lowered to the large landing pad about a hundred and fifty yards away. Darcy felt her heart jump into her throat at the thought of who might be in that jet. She’d finished her cherry Coke a few minutes ago and had been mindlessly watching a compilation of funny cat videos on her phone even if her mind was on Bucky. She’d spent the past two days analyzing their interactions through this new lens.

A group of people exited the jet and disbursed. Some of them went toward the large warehouse that held most of the equipment. Two men were headed toward the building. They weren’t familiar to Darcy and walked past her to enter the side door with nothing more than a curt nod in her direction. They were in tactical gear with guns secured to their belts. Was this the mission that Bucky had been on?

There were two figures standing outside the jet. One of them glanced at her and turned his back. It was nearly eleven o’clock at night and the light on the landing pad wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the figures underneath the wing of the jet, but the one who had looked her way had the same build as Bucky. The other figure could easily be Sam Wilson. She almost packed up and retreated to the lab to let him off the hook. Maybe he didn’t want to see her. Maybe he’d realized how silly the whole thing between them was.

The taller figure took off his jacket and handed it over to the other person. Darcy narrowed her eyes as she watched the one she thought was Bucky slip the jacket on. Why? Why did he take Sam’s jacket? They closed the ramp on the jet and lingered on the landing pad for another minute, having a conversation she couldn’t hear a word of. Finally, they turned toward her and started making their way down the long concrete walkway.

She couldn’t confirm their identities until they were crossing the parking lot, but she’d been correct; it was definitely Sam Wilson and Bucky. Why did he take Sam’s jacket, she wondered as they came closer. It wasn’t until they were only a few yards away that she realized Bucky might be trying to hide his left arm from her. She’d never seen the cybernetic arm from the pictures in his file. He obviously didn’t want her to know his identity when she considered that he only gave vague answers to her questions if he even answered them at all. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she’d never seen his arm since it would be a dead giveaway as to his identity.

“Are you the welcome party, Darcy?” Sam asked, smiling down at her as he and Bucky stepped up onto the wide concrete sidewalk around the building.

Her heart was beating in her chest and she couldn’t take her eyes off Bucky. His hair was tied back in a low knot at the base of his skull. She could see it because he seemed to be having the opposite problem; it was like he couldn’t bear to look at her. “Sorry, I’m all you get on short notice,” she told Sam, her voice sounding odd in her own ears.

“Nah, you’re top notch. Bucky thinks so, too.” Sam clapped Bucky on the back when Bucky finally turned around.

“Hey, Darcy,” he said, his voice soft and his eyes shifting from her to the ground and back again. He had his left hand shoved deep into a pocket of his pants.

“Hey,” she replied, crossing one ankle over the other and looking up at the two men. Bucky had knives and two guns strapped to his belt and legs. Sam was carrying a large pack in his right hand; she assumed it contained his wings.

Sam shifted his gaze back and forth between the two of them, a faint smile on his face. “I’m beat and I might have a lovely lady waiting for me in my bed, so I’ve gotta run,” he said. “Thanks for the welcome, Darcy.”

“I hope your cat sitter charges extra for the late nights,” she told him as he opened the door.

“She does, but I don’t pay with money,” Sam quipped before the door closed and left Darcy alone with Bucky.

“How was the mission?” she asked him.

“Fine,” he said, turning his left side away from her.

“You came back in one piece. That’s something,” Darcy said.

He gave her a shy smile before stepping closer and carefully lowering himself to the ground beside her. He kept his left hand in the shadows. She tried to catch a glimpse without being obvious, but he was skilled at keeping it out of her line of sight. It was so difficult to reconcile this man next to her who flashed her those warm smiles and shared her ice cream earlier in the week with the man she’d read about in the dossier who had lived through hell. “Thought you’d have already left for your parents’ place,” he murmured.

It wasn’t lost on Darcy that he sat on her left side so his right hand was next to her. She wanted to reach over and pull his left hand up into the dim light cast by the fixture over the door. It wouldn’t feel real until she saw the arm, but she also couldn’t force him. There was a photo of him strapped into a chair shortly after he’d been apprehended in Bucharest, and his expression in the picture haunted her. He’d looked lost and terrified and hopeless but unable to let it show too much. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” she said.

“Didn’t think I’d see you out here.”

“Disappointed?” she asked.

He didn’t turn his head to look at her when he said. “Not a bit. Am I bothering you?”

“Not a bit,” she answered honestly. “It’s good to see you, Bucky.”

“We going to get dinner when you get back?” She watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down after he asked her the question.

“Of course,” she told him. “It’ll be the light at the end of the tunnel of this weekend. If I could, I’d drag you to dinner at my parents’ place to help my mental health.”

Bucky shifted and adjusted the pistol hooked to his belt. “Yeah? I don’t think anyone has ever told me I’m good for their mental health.”

“It’s going to be a shitty weekend, and I like being around you,” she said.

“Why is it going to be so bad, doll? It’s just your family.”

She sighed and rested the crown of her head back against the brick exterior of the building. “I’m the kid that isn’t good enough. My brother did everything right, and I’m the family fuck up who has nothing to show for the past ten years.”

“But that isn’t true,” he said, voice soft.

“Actually, I think that’s the worst part. If they thought that and I had all these accomplishments, then I’d just rub their faces in my awesomeness. But… well, honestly, they’re right. I’ve got nothing to show. I’m making next to nothing and following an astrophysicist around the world.”

He turned his head toward her. “You’re pretty hard on yourself, doll.”

Darcy closed her eyes and smiled. “That’s an old-fashioned kind of nickname you have for me.”

Bucky just laughed under his breath.

“Are you happy?” she asked, unable to open her eyes to look at him.

He was silent for so long Darcy wondered if he was even going to answer. “I’m trying,” he told her. “Are you?”

“I tell everyone I am, but I don’t think I am.”

He opened his mouth and inhaled like he was going to say something, but the words dried up on his lips before he could make a sound. “It won’t be so bad, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’re here working with some very smart people who trust you. We’re all doing our part to keep the peace, including you. Don’t let your ma make you think you need to marry some boy and have kids to be happy.” He chuckled. “You start going steady with some guy, I won’t be able to share my ice cream with you.”

Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. “You’re right; he’d probably be way too intimidated by your smooth moves with the ladies.”

Bucky snorted and pushed himself to his feet. “What smooth moves are you talking about? I ain’t got a single one.”

Looking up at him, she saw his extended hand. Bucky pulled her up and released his grip. It felt like he cared, like he actually _saw_ her. Was she delusional and making all this up? This guy couldn’t be a fucking legend, not if he was slumming it with her. Maybe it really was _the_ Bucky’s grandson. The thought crossed her mind even though she knew it was unlikely.

What a world when the likeliest explanation was that the sweet, flirty guy at work was a hundred-year-old prisoner-of-war-turned-assassin who happened to be best friends with Captain America.

“You got a drive ahead of you tomorrow. Should get some sleep.”

“You, too, Bucky,” she told him, reluctantly taking a step back toward the door. Why wasn’t she afraid of him out here alone in the dark? Instead, she wanted to linger a little longer.

“Goodnight, doll,” he said as he opened the door to the building for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, how does Darcy tell Bucky that she knows who he is? And will she actually go visit her parents alone? I think we all know Bucky isn't going to allow her mom to set her up with some random dude down the street.


	8. Chapter 8

> _“I don’t know how to tell you I love you, to tell you I miss you, to tell you I care.” - Best Coast (I Don’t Know How)_

Darcy readjusted the strap of her overnight bag on her shoulder as she pushed open the door to the building. She’d just finished putting index cards with notes on them to remind Jane to eat at various places in the lab so she could take this long weekend away with a clean conscience. The door clicked shut behind her and the conversation that had been going on in the parking lot right in front of the door halted.

She looked up and saw Bucky standing there next to Sam Wilson. “Hey, guys,” she said.

Sam smiled at her. “Hey, Darcy.”

Bucky didn’t say anything, but he stepped forward and extended his left hand. His arms were covered with the leather jacket he always wore, but Darcy couldn’t keep from staring at the hand. She’d always thought something about it seemed off even though the idea felt silly to her. He extended the hand further and gave it a gentle shake.

“What?” she asked him.

“Your bag,” he said, taking another step closer. What a fucking gentleman, she thought. She could really get used to some hot dude offering to carry her shit everywhere.

Darcy handed it over, careful not to touch him in the process. She glanced over at Sam who was watching her with that enigmatic smile on his face. “Going to see your parents?” he asked.

Raising her brows in mock excitement, she said, “Yep. Yay, me.” When she turned her gaze back to Bucky, he was loading her bag in the trunk of that cherry red Mazda Roadster. “Uh, that’s not the car I was assigned.”

“I asked for you,” Bucky said before he shut the trunk. “That okay?”

“Uh, fuck yes, that’s okay. What strings did you have to pull to let them give me this for the weekend?”

Bucky shrugged and walked back over to her, pulling the keys out of his pocket. “Nothing,” he said.

Sam laughed. “He promised Fury a favor to-be-determined in the future.”

“Eyepatch and Attitude?” Darcy shuddered. “What do you think he’ll make you do?”

“Recon, intel.” Bucky said like it was nothing.

“Allowing me to ride in style is not worth you owing _that_ guy a favor.”

“He’s not so bad.”

Sam nodded. “He’s helping Bucky with some legal issues.”

Bucky almost cringed at Sam’s admission. She could take a wild guess at what those many legal issues might be but kept her mouth shut. “Well, you’re just the nicest guy around,” she finally said, holding out her hand so he could drop the keys into her palm.

Sam gave her a wave of his hand before saying, “Drive safe, see you when you get back.”

“Thanks,” she told his back as he walked around the corner. When Sam was out of hearing range, she glanced over at Bucky. He was watching her with those brilliant blue eyes. “And thank _you_ for the car.”

“Ain’t nothing,” he said with a lift of his shoulders, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his worn jeans.

“Sure you don’t wanna come with me? My mom is a first class nag, but she makes the best brisket on red letter days. And both her kids attending dinner at her house is a red letter day.”

Bucky laughed softly and shook his head. “Nah, you don’t want me tagging along. I’m not good with people.”

“Uh, you are great with people. I’m people and I’m about to start a fan club. Fifteen dollar membership fee and they get a picture of you I snapped on my cell phone while you weren’t looking because you were especially hot that day. Oh, and they get a numbered membership badge with their name printed on it.”

“Doll,” he said, shaking his head again. Was that just the faintest blush on his perfect cheeks?

“It’s for the best, I guess. If you came along with me, then my mom would think I have a super hot boyfriend. And then she’d get suspicious because she’s no fool.”

“Sounds like that might make more trouble for you than you already have.”

Darcy pushed her hair back and said, “Actually, it’d be hilarious and make my visit ten times better, but you have important things to do and I have to spend the next forty-eight hours in that ring of hell where you question your self-worth. It’s… the best, let me tell you.”

He opened his mouth to say something. When nothing came out, he pressed his lips together and turned away from her, taking a couple of steps away. Just when she thought he was going to follow Sam, he turned back around and said, “Would it? Would it make things better?”

“What? You coming with me?”

“Yeah.”

Darcy laughed nervously. “Well, sure. I mean, it’s nice to have a partner in crime. But, I’m not, like, expecting you to actually do that. Don’t be crazy.”

He swallowed and slid his gaze off to the side for a moment. When he leveled his eyes on her again, he looked more than a little nervous. “I’d come. With you. If… if you want me to.”

Darcy was sure she looked like a fish out of water as she opened and closed her mouth, grasping at a response that was just out of her reach. She hadn’t actually expected him to take her joke seriously. “Bucky, you don’t… I mean, I know situations sometimes make you uncomfortable with the PTSD or whatever you have and… I don’t want to make you feel like—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupted. “You were joking and I—”

“No, I wasn’t…” she said, cutting him off. “I mean, I was joking, but I was serious, too. I’d love to have someone—to have you—share this much-delayed visit home with me, but I can’t ask you to do that.” She left unsaid that she in no way felt like she ranked high enough to get Bucky Barnes to accompany her to a family dinner. That was an insane thought.

“You wouldn’t be asking. I offered. But I understand if you—”

“My family is going to think you’re my boyfriend,” she blurted out. “So if that’s going to bother you, then you probably shouldn’t offer. I completely understand why you—”

“That doesn’t bother me,” he said, blue eyes steady on her.

“It doesn’t?”

Bucky gave her a little smile. “Not a bit.”

“So, you’d… be okay being my fake boyfriend for a weekend?” she asked, trying to confirm the insanity that was this conversation.

“Yeah. Sure. You okay with that?”

“Uh, fuck yes, I’m okay with that. That was a stupid question.”

He chuckled. “I, uh, I should…” Bucky gestured at the building. “Do I have time to grab my overnight bag?”

“Bucky, I will wait out here for you until the sun goes down if you are telling me that you’re going to save my weekend and stun my mother into silence. God, I cannot wait to see her face when she tries to figure out how I got _you_ to date _me_.”

“Me?” he asked.

“Yeah, you. The hottest guy within a two-hundred—no, five-hundred-mile radius.”

This time there was no mistaking the pink that tinged his cheeks as he ducked his head down and stepped around her. “Give me fifteen?”

“Take twenty. I’ll be waiting. Might even let you drive.”

She could hear his soft laugh as he opened the door and disappeared into the building. Darcy bounced onto her toes and then rocked back to her heels. What an absolute insane turn of events.

“Are you stealing my partner?”

She jumped at the sound of Sam’s voice behind her.

“Umm, what?”

“Did he offer to go with you this weekend?” Sam asked, nodding at the building.

“Yeah,” she said.

He tilted his head at her. “Do you know who he is, Darcy?”

Chewing on her bottom lip, she said, “Yes, but I don’t think he knows that I know.”

“You should tell him.”

She scrunched her face up. “I kinda found out by hacking into his file.”

Sam gave her a disapproving and exasperated look and sighed. “You did what?”

“Nothing. Ignore that shit that came out of my mouth. I don’t even know how to use those contraptions called computers.”

“You need to tell him.”

“That I hacked into his file?”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand while he put the other on his hip. It was the same stance her father had taken when she’d tried his patience as a teenager. “That you know about his past.”

“How the hell do I tell him that I probably broke a bunch of rules to violate his privacy? Like, that is not an easy thing to just throw out in convo with someone.”

“Just tell him,” Sam told her, voice firm. “And help him have some fun. He’s forgotten how.”

“Fun I can do. Admitting my poor decisions is another matter,” she told him.

The corners of Sam’s mouth lifted up into a small grin as he shook his head at her. “Don’t break any laws this weekend. Fury is still trying to sort out his legal trouble.”

“Sure thing, dude. I’ll do my best.”

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you’ve never had an Icee before,” she said.

He had his left hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a cherry Icee that was resting on his knee. She’d let him drive and even talked him into putting the top down when they stopped at the gas station. The day was sunny and warm, and she was ready to feel the wind in her hair after so many months of cold weather.

“Do you like it?” she asked when he took a drink.

“It’s good,” he agreed, holding the cup between them before settling it back on his knee.

“Grape is better,” she said, offering him her cup. “Wanna try?”

He glanced over again and smiled. It was a bit like a drug to make him smile. After reading about his past and how difficult his life had been, being responsible for him flashing her one of those genuine smiles gave Darcy a rush. “Maybe next time,” Bucky said.

“I’ll share,” she said, moving the cup a little closer, the straw just a few inches from the corner of his mouth.

Bucky turned his head slightly, shifting his eyes back and forth from the road to the cup she was offering him.

“Go on,” she urged. “You know you want to.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and shifted closer. Eyes still on the road, he took a long drink from her straw. “Cherry is better,” he said after a moment with that mischievous look in his eyes.

“Bullshit,” she replied, taking a drink of her Icee. She settled back into the seat and watched the trees fly by as Bucky navigated the gentle turns of the highway. “Thanks for this,” Darcy told him.

“I should be thanking you. Haven’t done anything like this in a long time.”

“What? You don’t pretend to be a needy girl’s boyfriend often?”

“I don’t do anything just for fun.”

Her heart was going to pound out of her chest, she thought. “Yeah? So, you _do_ have experience fake-dating then?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, I don’t have any experience with that either. I’m afraid I’ll mess this up.”

“You’ll be fine. Just pretend you like me.”

“I _do_ like you,” Bucky replied. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Darcy opened her mouth to confess that she’d looked him up and she knew what he’d been through, but nothing came out. She didn’t know how to start or what his reaction would be. Would he be hurt? Would he turn the car around? Instead of doing what she knew she should, she pressed her lips together and reached for the touch screen that controlled the radio. Taylor Swift’s voice floated out of the speaker. The song sounded good with the wind rushing past them as Bucky hit the gas to accelerate up an incline.

She took a long drink of her grape Icee, her free hand raised in the air to feel the air flow over and between her spread fingers. Bucky glanced at her and smiled enough to flash his teeth. Maybe it would be a good weekend. Maybe she’d tell him what she’d done and he’d be okay. Maybe they could be real friends without secrets wedged between them.

 

* * *

 

“Okay,” Darcy said as Bucky took the exit. “Turn left.”

She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was just past two in the afternoon. She’d meant to get to her parents’ house earlier, but the slow start and then waiting for Bucky had put her over an hour behind schedule. He seemed surprisingly calm for someone who was about to be thrown into the thick of her family. She wouldn’t have believed that he was a hundred-year-old recovering war veteran who had been brainwashed and mentally violated for decades. That farm in Wakanda was better than a clinic in the States, obviously.

“So, we need a story,” she said.

“A story?”

“How we met, why you’re dating me.”

He glanced over and lifted a brow. “Why I’m dating you?”

“Yeah. Like, you think I’m secretly rich or I give great BJs.” Darcy widened her eyes at the same moment that Bucky seemed to choke. “No, wait. That’s probably a bad thing to say in front of my parents. It’ll have to be implied.”

“How about the truth?” he asked.

She gave him an exasperated look. “The truth is we aren’t dating, dude.”

“Let’s say we met at work.”

“And?” she prompted.

“And I saw you and thought you were the prettiest girl I’d seen in years and then you asked me out to dinner because I didn’t have the balls to ask you,” he said, eyes on the road.

Darcy laughed as she settled back in the seat again. “Okay, I like it. The best lie is partially true. Where did we go on our first date?”

“To a Thai restaurant and you shared your ice cream with me.”

His quick answers that didn’t feel like lies at all were making her heart pound in her chest. “Damn, you’re good at this.”

“It ain’t so hard pretending with you,” he said, voice soft. She wouldn’t have heard him out on the highway with the roar of the air rushing around them, but here sitting at a stoplight she heard each word.

“Ditto,” she said. “Turn right at the next light.” When he hit the gas, she continued with, “Are we the kind of couple who does or doesn’t engage in PDAs?”

“PDAs?” he asked, making the turn.

“Public displays of affection,” Darcy replied. “Holding hands, moo-moo eyes… kissing…”

He parted his lips and looked over at her before turning his gaze back to the road. It took him so long to respond that she’d already opened her own mouth to let him off the hook by saying they were definitely not a PDA couple. Instead, he cut in and said, “I think we’d… Yeah, I think PDAs are… they would be happening.”

“So, you’re not going to flip out on me if I try to hold your hand?”

He chuckled. “No, doll. But… could it be the right hand?” He flexed his left on the steering wheel.

“Uh, sure, yeah, no problem. Is there… something wrong with your left?” Was the cybernetic hand dangerous? She wondered if she accidentally grabbed his left hand if he’d crush the little bones in her fingers by accident.

“The left—it’s an old injury. Doesn’t work quite right sometimes.”

She nodded. “Hmm, okay.” So he wasn’t going to confess. And she didn’t know how to confess which meant they were at a stalemate. “Veer to the right here and then take the first left. My parents live at the end of the street.”

He did as she told him, appearing much calmer than she was. Darcy wondered if she was doing him a disservice by involving him in a fucked up situation when he was still trying to recover from an even more fucked up one where he’d been used and abused.

“You seem pretty chill about this. Aren’t you nervous?”

“Nah,” he said. “It’ll be easy.”

“Famous last words,” Darcy told him.

* * *

“Who is _this_?”

Darcy looked up to see her mother stepping off the porch, her eyes on Bucky as he unfolded himself from the driver’s side of the sporty car.

“Hi, mom. Nice to see you. Oh, just your only daughter over here. Don’t mind me.”

Nora Lewis at least had the decency to look halfway embarrassed as she met Darcy at the front bumper and pulled her into a hug. “I’ve missed you so much, Darce.”

“I missed you, too, mom,” Darcy said, returning the hug.

“Who is the man?” her mother whispered in her ear.

Oh boy, Darcy thought, here we go. “Uh, that’s… Bucky. He’s my, uh, boyfriend.” Shit. Did she sound strangled when she said that? Her mother had always been good at sniffing out lies and Darcy was usually a little bit smoother in making them.

“Excuse me?” her mother said, pulling back and holding Darcy by the shoulders. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing your boyfriend.” Leaning in closer, she hissed, “You didn’t tell me you _had_ a boyfriend.”

“Uh, we’re kinda new. Didn’t know if I should subject him to parental scrutiny.”

“Hi, Mrs. Lewis,” Bucky said, rounding the front of the car. When Darcy’s mom turned around, he extended his right hand. Instead of taking it, she waved his offered hand away and pulled him into a hug. Darcy could see his entire body tense as he inhaled a sharp breath.

All she could think of was whether her mother could feel his cybernetic arm underneath the leather jacket. Darcy had only touched him there once and it had been so brief she couldn’t remember noticing any difference. Grabbing a handful of the back of her mother’s shirt, Darcy pulled her back. “Geez, mom. Give him some space. He just met you and it’s not like we’re getting married or something. Don’t come on so strong or I won’t have a boyfriend for long.”

“Oh, honey, I’m just so happy for you,” her mom said, sliding her gaze back over to Bucky. His appeal was pretty universal. The build and the tresses and the scruffy facial hair and the air of competence with those eyes and that smile… Well, it was pretty lethal to anyone who found men attractive. Bucky was top notch and didn’t seem to know it.

“Hey, sweet pea.”

Darcy turned back to the house to find her father on the bottom step of the porch. As soon as she laid eyes on him, she felt all the air leave her body. Suddenly, all those signs that she really had missed five years came crashing down on her head. There were overgrown houses all over the world, roads in disrepair, stadiums and arenas abandoned and given back to nature. And yet none of it hit her quite as hard as seeing her dad with grey hair and a face that had gathered more wrinkles and wear than five years should be able to give you.

“Hey, dad,” she said, trying to cover her shock at his appearance.

“It’s been a minute, Darcy-girl,” he said, tears gathering on his lower lids. He held onto the railing as he took the last stop down the sidewalk. She met him more than halfway. “I missed you so much,” he whispered.

She buried her face in his shoulder as he wrapped her up in a hug. “I missed you, too, dad. I’m sorry I didn’t come see you last month. I’m really sorry.” And she was sorry. She felt stupid and childish and guilty. She’d known it would feel this way when she actually mustered the courage to stop running and face reality by accepting that she’d lost five years. She’d been gone while half the world just carried on. She’d been avoiding coming home because she didn’t want to deal with the questions about her life plan, but her avoidance had probably felt like shit to her father who had spent five years without most of his family. Avoiding hearing about their wish for her to settle down with a nice boy felt so petty and so inconsequential now. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled again, tears welling up in her eyes as she hugged him back.

“Who’s the man?” her dad whispered.

Darcy wiped her tears away on her dad’s shirt sleeve. It felt wrong to lie to him now, but she couldn’t change the plan they’d already committed to. “My boyfriend.”

Her dad pulled back and held her shoulders with his hands just like her mother had done. “You didn’t tell me about him when we talked a few days ago.”

“I didn’t think he was coming,” she said.

“Does he make you happy?”

Darcy felt her heart constrict. “Dad,” she whispered before exhaling a shuddering breath and wiping the tears from her cheeks.

He leaned closer and said, “I don’t know about the long hair. He looks like a bad influence.”

She laughed softly. “Dad, come on.”

“Is he respectful?” he whispered.

“Yes. Yes, dad. Stop. Please. I haven’t seen you in…”

“Almost six years,” he told her.

“Right. Almost six years and you’re on my ass about who I’m dating,” she muttered under her breath. “He’s a nice guy and I think you’ll like him.”

He smiled. “I’m just happy to see you, sweet pea. I’ll be nice to your fellow.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, teasing him.

Her dad gave her another hug before letting her go and stepping around her to extend his hand to Bucky. Bucky smiled as he reached out for the handshake. Darcy held her breath as she watched the brief exchange and the way her dad cupped Bucky’s elbow with his free hand while they shook. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lewis,” Bucky said.

“This is Bucky,” Darcy said, walking over to them.

“You treating my little girl well?” Robert Lewis asked after a brief moment of silence.

“I try my best, sir,” Bucky replied.

“Well, then I guess you can call me Rob.”

“Okay, okay, let’s break it up,” Darcy told them. “I can only handle so much awkwardness in one day. Please refrain from scaring off my brand new boyfriend. Can we go inside or will the interrogation continue?”

“We’re not interrogating,” her dad said.

“Speak for yourself, Rob,” her mother replied. “I want to know where Darcy and this young man met.”

“Mom,” Darcy groaned.

Bucky flashed her a smile and a wink as he walked back to the car. She stood there and watched him pull out both their bags. Darcy knew it was fake, but it felt so good to have him there with her like they were in this together instead of shouldering most of the burden herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you are enjoying this little tale of two idiots pining for each other. We're almost to the halfway point. Nine more chapters to go! Thank you to everyone who has left me a comment to let me know they are reading. This author appreciates the feedback. As I've said before, it's nice to know you aren't spending your time and heart on something and then throwing it into the black void of the internet. Thank you for catching it and treating it with love and care. <3


	9. Chapter 9

> _”Maybe she wants you, maybe she’s shy. Maybe her heart will always be blind to your love. So go, take the roses you left in the sink, strike all your poses, knock back a drink. I’m saying don’t wait, go tell her now.” - Tom Odell (Go Tell Her Now)_

Darcy’s mother had watched him through most of the dinner. She was attentive and friendly and very interested in all of his answers, especially as they related to how he met and how he felt about her daughter. Bucky didn’t think she meant to be overbearing, but he could see why Darcy felt overwhelmed and had avoided coming home. The weight of her expectations for her only daughter was palpable. She had even asked about his thoughts on children. Unsure of how to even begin to answer that, Bucky had been more than relieved when Darcy had interrupted and made a crack about her mother adopting if she was so desperate for a baby.

Her father, on the other hand, seemed more interested in Darcy. He rarely took his eyes off her. It was as if he was afraid she’d disappear again. Darcy appeared to be weathering the scrutiny, though Bucky could see the strain in her face when her dad asked about her plans for the future in relation to her job. When he wasn’t watching Darcy, he was taking Bucky’s measure with steady eyes. There was something in his gaze that made Bucky uncomfortable, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was just the feeling of being sized up by a woman’s father and found lacking.

“What exactly do you do for the Avengers, Bucky?” Rob Lewis asked him as the four of them sat around the dinner table with cups of decaf coffee her mother had made shortly after dinner.

Bucky cleared his throat and searched for an answer that wouldn’t give too much information. “Little bit of this, little bit of that. Missions in the field mostly.”

“Were you in the military?” Rob asked.

Nodding, Bucky said, “I was. Army.”

“Afghanistan?”

Bucky gave a tight smile. “Something like that. I, uh, don’t talk about it much.”

Rob lifted both his hands, palms out. “Say no more. I understand. Thank you for your service.”

“Please, don’t… No need to thank me,” Bucky said, feeling uncomfortable at the conversation veering a little too close to his past. He’d decided to try his best not to lie to Darcy or her folks during this strange weekend that was so far outside his comfort zone he wasn’t sure why he ever agreed. Actually, scratch that. Bucky knew exactly why he had agreed. She was standing there looking beautiful and overwhelmed with the prospect of not having any moral support and he’d just caved. The thought of her mother arranging a dinner with some guy down the street who was going to spend time with Darcy when Bucky couldn’t… Well, that thought had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and he’d offered to go with her. Maybe it’d give him the opportunity to tell her who he really was. He was a bit surprised she hadn’t found him out by now.

“What are your plans for the future?” Nora Lewis asked as she brought her cup up for a sip. “Any thoughts on where you’d like to settle down?”

“Ohhhh-kaaaaay,” Darcy said, standing up. “Stop interrogating my boyfriend or he isn’t going to be my boyfriend for long.”

Bucky smiled up at her. “It’s okay, doll.”

She widened her eyes at him and nodded toward the hallway. Faking a loud yawn, she stretched her arms up in the air. Bucky dropped his gaze to her midriff where he caught a flash of her bare skin when her T-shirt lifted. He shifted his gaze up so as not to be too creepy with where he had chosen to look. Things went from bad to worse—or maybe good to better—when he found himself staring at her breasts instead of her face. Bucky exhaled sharply and shifted his eyes away from her altogether. This time he found himself looking into her father’s face. Rob Lewis raised his brows in some show of question or possibly disapproval. Yes, Bucky thought, I was looking at your daughter in ways that I have no right to look at her because she’s perfect and generous and kind and I’m not worth her time.

“So, what’s the sleeping situation?” Darcy asked. “I’ll take the chair in the living room, and since this hunk is taller he can have the couch.”

“Oh, I thought you’d stay in your old room,” Nora said.

Darcy raised her brows. “I thought you were converting that into your warehouse for the Lularoe leggings.”

“Oh, I stopped selling those after… well, after we came back from… wherever we were. You know, abandoning a business for five years will really put a damper on sales.”

“You don’t say?” Darcy asked. “So, my room is still the den of teenage angst that I crafted it into before I left for parts unknown?”

Nora smiled at her daughter. “Don’t be silly, Darcy. I took down the Twilight posters after you went away to grad school.”

“Don’t you dare try to embarrass me in front of my boyfriend by bringing up blatant lies,” Darcy told her mother with a not-so-serious expression on her face before she glanced over at Bucky and smiled. “Obviously, I was much more sophisticated as a teenager. I preferred Harry Potter.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but he liked when she looked at him like the two of them had a secret.

“I changed the sheets on the bed. It’s all ready for you,” her mother said.

“I’ll… sleep on the couch,” Bucky said.

“Oh, we don’t mind,” Nora said, looking over at her husband. The look on her face said that he’d better agree with her or he’d regret it. “Right, Rob? We’re progressive. Darcy might be our little girl, but she’s an adult, too. You can both stay in the bedroom. I’m sure you’ll be much more comfortable there.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s just… stop this conversation before it gets even weirder and you pull out the Atlas of the Body from the Encyclopedia set in the basement like you did when I was twelve,” Darcy said, waving her hands in the air. Looking at him, she raised her brows and said, “You coming to bed, babe?”

Bucky felt his mouth go dry and he sat there with no response in his head for a long moment. “Uh, yeah. Sure,” he finally told her as he abruptly stood and almost knocked the chair over. “Thank you for dinner, Nora, Rob. It was delicious.”

“Yep, okay. Let’s move it along. I’m beat. Dead on my feet. Gotta get some shut-eye.” Darcy grabbed his right hand and pulled him out of the room and down a dimly-lit hallway.

Once they were standing in her childhood bedroom, she shut the door and leaned back against it. “Sorry for the awkwardness.”

He chuckled. “It’s fine. It isn’t even that bad. They love you,” Bucky told her.

“They do. And I’m super fucking grateful, but sometimes I could just die.”

“When they go to bed, I’ll go sleep on the couch,” he told her.

Darcy shook her head. “No way. They’ll know we’re faking if you do that. I’ll sleep in this bean bag chair and you take the bed.”

“Darcy,” Bucky said, “don’t be silly.”

“Hey, I’m all for sharing the bed with you. Honestly, I’m not worthy of that privilege, and you didn’t sign up to find out if you’re the big spoon or the little spoon.”

“Doll, sometimes I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“That’s because I babble when I’m nervous.”

He felt that twist in his gut. “Do I make you nervous?” Bucky asked in a soft voice.

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” she said. “No. You think I’m afraid of you? No, no, no. I’m intimidated by your hotness.”

Bucky didn’t feel attractive at all, so her brazen confession made him feel flustered and a bit uncomfortable. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for her to laugh the comment away like it had all been a sarcastic joke. Turning away from her, he looked out the bay window into the backyard. The grass lawn eventually gave way to a thick line of trees. The light from the back porch to the left was the only illumination other than the moonlight.

“I’m sorry for being weird. If you want to go back to—”

“No,” Bucky told her. “I want to be here. I— I don’t think you know me well enough to be sharing a bed with me, though.”

“What does that mean?”

He turned around to look at her. “It means I don’t want you to find out something about me later that will make you regret being so close to me.”

She looked as if she was on the verge of saying something, but shoved the words back down into her gut. Instead, she said, “Being so close to you?”

“I’ve been around, Darcy. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things that might scare you.”

“What kind of things?” When he didn’t answer, she sat down on the edge of the bed. “Bucky, you can’t say something like that and just not explain.”

“I was in the service, the military. I’ve killed people. A lot of people.”

“Okay,” she said. “Did you _want_ to kill these people?”

“No,” he told her, voice firm, resolute.

“Okay, that’s good. So, you’re not a psychopath.” She toed off her red shoes with the white laces and said, “Look, I’m a pretty good judge of character. It’s one of the few things I’m awesome at. And I think you’re a good guy. I know you have your hangups and you don’t have to explain yourself to me if you don’t want to, but… I’m not afraid of you and I think we can be adults and share a mattress. Unless that makes you uncomfortable.”

Bucky opened his mouth to respond, but he had nothing to say to that. She was too understanding, too forgiving, too willing to trust. Keeping his identity from her by omission was just as bad as lying about it. However, the thought of confessing his sins made his stomach churn. He’d likely lose her if he laid it all out in front of her. He didn’t doubt that she was a great judge of character, but he was a special case. He knew his character wasn’t in question; it had taken him years to come to terms and learn that level of forgiveness for himself. It was his past _actions_ that would drive her away, whether they matched up with his character or not.

When he didn’t say anything back, she said, “I’ll make a blanket wall down the middle,” with a grin.

Bucky couldn’t help but return the smile. “What’s a blanket wall?”

“When you bunch up a big blanket and make a little divider that you aren’t allowed to cross in the middle of the bed.”

He couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at her offer.

“It’s a full-size bed. I mean, we couldn’t fit in a twin-size together, but this isn’t so bad. Which side do you want? I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.” She held those hands up, palms out.

“I’m not afraid of your hands, doll.” Just the idea of her touching him sent an electric current of desire through his body. It was something he hadn’t felt in many years. The sensation was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

“Ditto,” she told him. “I’m going to change into my pajamas in the bathroom. Pick your side.”

He felt like a pushover when he agreed and let her go. While she was doing whatever a woman like her did in the bathroom across the hall, he took a moment to consider exactly how he was going to manage to hide his left arm from her. He’d brought only long-sleeve shirts, but his hand was a giveaway. He could always continue to wear the glove. He’d been wearing it almost all the time when he wasn’t on a mission. Bucky was okay letting her continue to believe he was normal for now, even though the lies by omission were wearing on him, making him feel guilty. She really deserved better.

He sat on the foot of the bed and considered the floor. He should sleep there on the floor by her bed. He knew it was the right thing to do. Sharing the bed wouldn’t be appropriate, despite how much he wanted to know what it felt like to be that close to her.

“I know it’s kinda early to turn in, but I could only protect you from my parents for so long.” He looked up and saw her shut the door and turn around to face him.

It felt like only a minute had passed, but it must have been longer because the sky outside had gotten considerably darker. She was in a pair of cotton shorts that gave him a view of almost every inch of her legs. They had tiny little llamas printed in a pattern over purple fabric. Her top matched them and did little to downplay her chest. Her breasts stretched the thin, cotton material, and Bucky realized she probably wasn’t wearing a bra by the look of it.

When he didn’t respond, she crossed her arms over her chest in a move that was obviously self-conscious. He dropped his gaze to her bare feet with sparkly green polish on her toes. “Sorry,” she said, giving a breathy little laugh. “I didn’t know you were coming when I packed my bag. I assumed the only people who would see my pajamas would be me and maybe my mom.”

He swallowed and said. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I… I’m…”

“You can have the bathroom now if you want to change,” she said, taking mercy on him.

“Okay. Thanks.” He almost ran from the room with his duffle bag clenched in his fist.

Staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror did nothing to alleviate his anxiety over the situation. She was beautiful and kind and he was pretty much lying to her about his past by not telling her. Each time he’d encountered her lately, he’d expected Darcy to detour away from him and make up an excuse to leave sooner rather than later because he’d been waiting on her to get curious and start asking questions to people other than Bruce and Wanda. He knew Sam wouldn’t say anything to her because he knew how Bucky felt about revealing his past, but there were other people she had easy access to who would be able to clue her in. It was a bit shocking she hadn’t looked into him, considering she seemed so comfortable with him while he’d told her almost nothing about himself.

Bucky splashed some water on his face and changed into a pair of drawstring pants and a black long-sleeve henley that covered the scars and the vibranium arm. The glove would have to stay, but he knew he needed to say something sooner rather than later. Her mother had touched his arm when she’d hugged him. What if she discovered the arm before he could explain? What if they woke up touching? Bucky pressed his palms into the bathroom vanity counter and leaned forward as he thought about what it would feel like to touch her. It was hard to pull away from that train of thought when he considered what she was wearing and how close he was going to be to her tonight.

After taking three deep breaths, he slipped out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom across the hall. She was sitting on the left side of the bed, her back propped up against the headboard and her legs covered with the bedding. Disappointment was fast on the heels of relief when he realized he couldn’t see all that skin.

“You okay with the left side?” Darcy asked.

That would put his right arm next to her. Good. Sleeping with his left arm next to her might lead to her touching it. He opened his mouth and said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” That didn’t mean she wouldn’t find out, though. His shirt sleeve could catch against the blanket and lift while he was sleeping. Maybe it would be a blessing. Maybe it was what he needed to come clean and tell her what should have been said already. Maybe he could show her the arm—his arm. If she was uncomfortable afterward, then he’d leave. He’d call Sam and ask for a pickup. The jet could be there in minutes instead of hours.

Bucky walked across the floor, each step deliberate as his heart pounded away in his chest. He’d been in life or death situations that hadn’t sent him into a tailspin like this. He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, keeping his back to her for a moment.

“If you want to sleep on the couch, you can. Or I’ll sleep on it.” He voice was soft and reassuring.

“No, it’s fine,” Bucky told her. “Your parents would think something isn’t right.”

“Look, I don’t care about that if this makes you uncomfortable.”

Bucky shifted, pushed himself back into the bed, and maneuvered until he was propped up against the headboard with his legs stretched out in front of him just like she was. “I want to be uncomfortable. I want to be here… with you.”

“Shhh, don’t say things like that or I’ll get ideas,” she teased, winking at him.

“Go on,” he told her. “I’m not gonna stop you from getting ideas.”

Darcy laughed but soon sobered up before looking over at him with more compassion in her eyes than he was accustomed to seeing. “Seriously, Bucky, I don’t want you to do anything that will make you uncomfortable.”

“You’re not making me do anything, doll. I like playing your boyfriend.”

Her pink lips parted, but nothing came out of her mouth but a soft exhale. Had he rendered speechless this quick-witted and friendly woman who always had a thought to express? Had he been too forward or was her heart beating as fast as his? Maybe if the air conditioner would kick off and he listened hard, he would hear her heart thumping away in her chest.

The sound of splattering raindrops blowing against the window startled them both. Darcy looked out the bay window and then to Bucky. “The car,” she said, eyes wide.

It took a moment for what she meant to sink in. “The top is down,” he remembered.

“Shit.”

Bucky jumped out of bed and grabbed the keys out of the front pocket of his duffle. “I’ll get it,” he told Darcy. She laughed and wiggled down into the bed further.

The light in the kitchen was on, but the house was otherwise quiet as he rushed to the front door and slipped outside. The rain had come on suddenly and was picking up even as he dashed down the driveway in his bare feet to turn on the car and raise the roof up. The seats had gotten a little wet, but nothing that would cause lasting damage. He hurried back inside and wiped his feet on the mat by the front door before shutting and locking it.

On his way back toward the bedroom, he paused in the doorway to the living room. Darcy’s father was sitting in an armchair with a book in his hands. The only light was from a small lamp on the table next to him. He watched Bucky over the rims of his reading glasses.

“Sir,” Bucky said, nodding at the man in acknowledgment.

“How long have you worked with the Avengers?” Rob asked him.

Bucky shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling the intensity of the man’s stare. “I don’t know that I officially was working with them until a couple of months ago.”

“You look familiar.”

His stomach twisted into a knot. “Do I?”

“I’m a history buff,” Rob said, holding up the book in his hand. It was a retrospective on War. “I read a lot. Growing up when I did right after the Second World War, I was pretty into Captain America and the Howling Commandos.”

That knot of anxiety turned into a knot of dread as Bucky felt his little lie come crashing down around him.

“You said your name is Bucky. And you look a fair bit like the surveillance photos from about seven or eight years ago when the news reported that a former Howling Commando was suspected of a bombing in Vienna.” Rob chuckled, but there wasn’t much humor in the sound. “I feel a little crazy asking this, but is your name James Barnes?”

Bucky inhaled and reached out to steady himself against the doorframe. He needed to leave. This was going to end badly. “She doesn’t know,” he told Rob. “I don’t know how to tell her.”

Sitting forward in his chair, Darcy’s father said, “You mean to tell me you’re dating my little girl and she doesn’t even know who you are.”

“I’m not… I’m not _that_. I’m not a monster. I swear.”

There was a tense moment of silence when Rob sat there with the glossy, hardback book fisted in his hand and Bucky stood in the doorway, ready to flee if things went south. “You actually think she doesn’t know who you are?” Rob asked, his voice incredulous.

“Yes. If she did, then I wouldn’t be here. Mr. Lewis, my intentions weren’t to hurt her or lie to her. She’s… very special and I haven’t had someone treat me the way she does in a very long time.” Bucky dropped his shoulders and sighed. “I apologize. I’ll leave.”

“Wait,” Rob told him before he could turn around. “I can see you make her happy, and I know you didn’t plant that bomb or willingly work for HYDRA. Like I said, I’m a history buff—new and old. There was a lot of speculation in some of the forums I frequent that you didn’t die in Siberia. Guess those conspiracy theories were true after all.”

“Your daughter is important to me. I’d do anything for her,” Bucky said softly.

Rob watched him with assessing eyes, weighing Bucky’s words for truth. “Then why haven’t you told her who you are?”

Bucky gave a bitter smile to the other man. “Because I’m worried she’ll be afraid of me and this will go away.”

“She deserves the truth,” Rob said.

“She does,” Bucky agreed, those tendrils of guilt spreading through his mind.

“But it’s funny that you think she hasn’t found you out already,” Rob said. “People underestimate her all the time. I know because I’ve underestimated her before, too. Don’t make that mistake.”

Bucky pulled in a deep breath. “I’ll tell her now, and then I’ll leave. I apologize, Mr. Lewis.”

Rob stood up and took a couple of stiff steps forward. “Arthritis,” he told Bucky. Two more steps and he was moving a bit more easily. Bucky held his breath as the other man stopped in front of him and said, “I told you to call me Rob.” Extending his hand, he said. “Thank you for all you’ve done for this country, Sergeant Barnes.”

Bucky stepped back, looking down at Rob’s hand. “I didn’t… I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re a war hero who was held prisoner. You deserve a medal.”

“I don’t,” Bucky insisted before accepting her father’s hand and shaking it.

Rob didn’t let go when Bucky did. Instead, he pulled Bucky in a bit closer and said, “You could beat me in a fair fight, but if you hurt my little girl then I’ll fight dirty and shoot you in the gut with a shotgun.”

Bucky took a staggered step back when the other man let go of his hands. “I’d never hurt her.”

“Good. Why don’t you go in there and tell her who you are and watch her laugh at you for thinking she didn’t know?”

Bucky’s smile felt bittersweet. He wished that were the case—that he could just walk in there and confess and she’d roll her eyes and tell him he was being silly. If only...


	10. Chapter 10

> _”I try not to show how I feel about you, thinking we should wait, but we don’t really want to. I just wanna get away and sit right next to you.” - Snoh Aalegra (I Want You Around)_

The door opened just enough for Bucky to slip back into the room. He stood there with his back against the closed door and looked at her. Darcy had settled into the bed and laid her head on one of the most uncomfortable pillows ever. An extra blanket was bunched up against her to form a barrier between her side of the bed and his, just like she’d promised him.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

Darcy rolled more fully onto her side and raised up to prop her head on her hand while her elbow sank into the mattress. “Okay. What’s up?” Was he telling her he needed to leave? That he didn’t want to play this silly little game with her anymore? She’d tell him to go, but she’d still be disappointed.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. I… I’m Bucky Barnes. Do you know what that means? Do you know—” He looked like he might double over and throw up on the floor.

“Do I know that you were born in nineteen-seventeen and you were Captain America’s best friend? Yeah, I know.” She watched his face morph from worry to shock. “Is that okay?”

“How long have you known?” he asked, taking a tentative step forward so she could see his face in the light coming from the window.

“Not very long. Before you came back from the last mission. Are you mad?”

He exhaled a sharp breath. “No. Doll, why would I be mad?”

Darcy smiled at him. “Because I let you believe I was clueless. Why are you bringing this up now?”

Two more steps forward brought Bucky to the side of the bed. “Your dad knows who I am.”

“Oh, fuck,” Darcy muttered, throwing herself back onto the mattress. “What’d he say?”

“He asked if I was… me. He wanted to make sure you were safe with me, I think.”

“Embarrassing,” Darcy said, rolling her eyes.

“He loves you,” Bucky replied.

“I know, I know. Did you tell him we’re faking?”

“No,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her.

She stayed where she was and looked at the back of his head, the set of his shoulders as they slumped forward. After a long moment, she said, “Do you want to talk? If you do, I’d like to listen.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Yeah, me neither. I have so many favorite songs that I don’t know if we should start at my obsession with Motown or emo from the early two thousands. Jimmy Eat World, My Chemical Romance, Saves the Day, even Fall Out Boy.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder at her. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, but you let me off the hook a lot. You know that, right?”

She smiled up at him. “What? You don’t like it when I let you off the hook?”

Bucky smiled back and carefully maneuvered until he was lying on his back beside her. “I don’t deserve it,” he said, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on his stomach.

“I’ll be as nice as I damn well please to you,” Darcy told him, mimicking his posture, flat on her back with her hands folded over her stomach.

His chuckle was a pleasure to hear. "Your dad said he'd use his shotgun on me if I hurt you."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. He doesn't have a shotgun. He's terrified of guns."

"You sure about that? Seemed pretty serious. I don't plan on testing him."

“He’s a bluffer, trust me. How’d he figure you out? I didn’t make the connection right away even though you were all over the news a few years ago. The convincing glove and the story about your death in Siberia threw me off.”

“News buff and a fan of Steve’s, I guess.”

Darcy turned onto her side and settled her head into the lumpy pillow that had probably been on this bed since she moved out. Her mother obviously had reservations about converting it to her inventory room since Darcy had tucked tail and returned home more than once after she’d moved out. Granted, those stays hadn’t been for more than a few weeks between travels with Jane, but still… Her parents didn’t have faith that she was out on her own yet.

“Do you want to talk about Steve?” she asked as she observed his profile.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sorry he died,” she whispered.

Bucky turned his head to look at her. “He didn’t. That was just a story.”

“What?” Darcy asked. She wasn’t sure if she was more surprised by the admission that all the news stories about Captain America dying a heroic death were a lie or by how close Bucky was to her. “You guys lie to the media like a bunch of damn politicians.”

He rolled onto his side to face her. “Well, it’s… complicated. The science and technology part of it is kinda beyond me. I mean, I love it, but I don’t always understand it all.”

“Uh, preaching to the choir. What happened? Where is he?”

“You know what happened with the Stones, right? That they had to go back and get them to bring everyone back.”

Darcy nodded, shifting her gaze back and forth between his eyes and his lips.

“Someone needed to go back and return the Stones to where they were taken. Something about dooming alternate realities if a stone was missing. Steve was the one who went back to return them.”

Darcy felt her stomach drop. “Oh god, did he not come back?”

Giving her a little smile, he said, “No, but I knew if things went his way that he wasn’t going to. He went back to right after the war and stayed with the woman he was in love with.”

“Wait, what? So, he’s in the past? Like, two of him?”

“No, he’s in an alternate reality where he got to have a family and a normal life.”

Darcy furrowed her brows. “And that’s… okay? Was that the plan?”

Her question made him chuckle softly. “Yeah, if anybody deserves to be happy, then it’s Steve. He spent his life risking himself for everyone else. When he told me what he wanted to do, I told him to go for it.”

“So, we’re just going to assume Captain America is living his best life in some other reality?”

“Oh, I know he is. He came back after living there for decades.”

“So, he’s back?” Darcy asked, her head reeling.

Bucky shifted and Darcy looked down to see his left hand resting on the bunched-up blanket between them. He was so close and smelled like leather and soap. “No, he left. Went back to his life. He was… an old man and had kids and grandkids he wanted to be with. He just came back to… well, to give his shield to Sam.”

Darcy laughed nervously. “The Captain America Shield? Wait, does that make Sam Captain America now?”

There was humor in his eyes as the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “You should ask him.”

“Why? Sensitive subject?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. He’s struggling with it right now.”

“Why?”

“You’d have to ask him. I think he’s worried about being worthy of it and maybe feeling like Steve’s a tough act to follow.”

“Well, he kinda is,” Darcy said. “I mean, oof, I had a crush. How could you not with all the heroics and muscles? His ass alone…” She pressed her lips together and gave a sheepish smile.

Bucky adjusted his head on the pillow, still grinning. “You’re gonna break my heart,” he said.

“Don’t think I haven’t notice that your ass is seriously underrated. You’d give him a run for his money if you had the same publicity.”

“Thanks, doll,” he said, chuckling. “I think I’d rather stay out of the public eye, though.”

“Well, I’ll appreciate your ass for everyone, then.” Darcy winced. “I mean that in the least creepy way possible.”

“That’s how I’m taking it,” he assured her. “You seem to be taking all this in stride.”

She watched his tongue slip out to wet his lower lip and wished she could lean toward him and press a kiss to his mouth. That would be crazy, though. “I’m pretty good at going with the flow. The world is getting wackier and if I get all hung up on some of this shit then I’d lose my mind. Plus, you don’t look like you’re a day over a hundred, so it’s pretty easy to forget you’re… that Bucky Barnes.”

“Most of the time I wish I wasn’t that Bucky Barnes.”

“That’s a shitty thing to wish,” she told him. “That guy is amazing. He’s lived through so much and come out the other side pretty awesome. What other superhero is going to waste a weekend saving me from the weight of my parents’ expectations by pretending to be my boyfriend?”

“Oh, I ain’t a superhero.”

“Bullshit, dude. You’re working with the Avengers. You’re Captain America’s best friend.”

“Which Captain America?” he asked with a cheeky grin.

“Well, Sam Wilson and his smug ass haven’t come out of the closet with that shield yet, so I guess there’s only one right now and that’s Steve Rogers.” She paused and said, “Do you miss him?”

Bucky closed his eyes for a long moment while she looked at the way his dark lashes contrasted with his skin. He really was gorgeous. It was surprising he was willing to spend so much time with her. When he opened his eyes, there was a strange emotion she couldn’t quite name in their blue depths. Grief, weariness? He looked _tired_. “Yeah, I miss him. I’m happy for him, though. I wouldn’t change anything because he deserves what he found.”

“Even though he left you?”

“He didn’t— He had a chance to rest after years of sacrificing everything he wanted. He had a chance to really live, and I told him he should take it.”

“Why?”

“Because he deserves it more than anyone.”

Darcy furrowed her brows and shifted in the bed. Her hand brushed his, and he pulled away just slightly. “What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

“What about your life? Is this what you want?”

He gave a heavy, weary sigh. “Steve had his past taken away from him. He wanted to go back there. I… I don’t want to go back.”

“Didn’t you have your past taken away, too?”

“My past is different than Steve’s. Darcy, you know what I was, right?”

She wanted to tell him she’d hacked into his file, but the words died before she could say them. What if he felt betrayed? What if he thought she didn’t trust him? “You were experimented on as a prisoner of war by a terrorist group and frozen, just like Steve.” Maybe he’d tell her and she’d never have to admit to her violation of his privacy.

Her response seemed to make him deflate and sink into the bed even more if it were possible. “It’s a little more complicated than that, doll.”

“Then tell me.”

Bucky parted his lips, but nothing came out. After a moment of silence, he pressed them together and let his gaze drift off to look out the window behind her.

“Or not,” she offered.

He didn’t look at her when he said, “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you. Dude, I’ve never felt safer.”

Bucky did look at her after she made that admission. He looked so sad. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“God, you and the little terms of endearment. You’ll get me all flustered if you say shit like that while you’re lying in bed with me.”

“Yeah?” he asked, eyes half closed as he shyly looked at her through his lashes.

“Hey, stop playing that sweet, shy guy card with me. It’s my weakness.”

He laughed and reached out to press his left hand over her right one that was resting on the blanket between them. It almost felt like skin. If she didn’t know better, then she wouldn’t question whether it was or not. It felt capable of pretty much anything from feats of strength to shooting a gun with deadly accuracy to probably making her come so many times she’d beg him to stop. Maybe she’d get to see those first two happen, but dreaming of knowing him in any way other than buddies at work was a pipedream.

“Thank you, doll. _Thank you_.”

She smiled at him, relishing the weight of his hand against hers. “What are you thanking me for, silly?”

“Everything. For being you.”

His simple answer made Darcy’s heart melt. She needed to stop this or she was going to get too wrapped up in someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t actually follow through on these vague flirtations of more than a friendship. “Will you tell me about Howling Commando hijinks from back in the day?” she asked him. “I skipped that chapter during my history class in school.”

He pulled his hand away but didn’t seem upset or unhappy with her.

“Only if it doesn’t make you uncomfortable,” Darcy added.

“It doesn’t. It’s, uh, kinda easy with you.”

“What is?”

“Talking about this stuff.”

She adjusted her pillow and settled in to listen. “Then tell me about all the shit they didn’t put in the history books about back in the day.”

This made him laugh softly. “Some of it ain’t fit for a lady’s ears.”

“You think I’m a lady?”

“Sure look like one to me,” he said, his gaze dropping to her chest.

She had a sheet pulled up to hide her braless boobs in the tight shirt she was wearing. Part of her was relieved she was covered and he couldn’t see much of her body, but another part of her wanted to slide the sheet down and ask him if he wanted to look.

He jerked his gaze back up to her face after only a moment, seeming somewhat bewildered at what he’d done. She wanted to assure him that she certainly didn’t mind him trying to get a look at any of her assets, but thought it might embarrass him. “You sure you want me to bore you with this?”

“Absolutely,” she said.

Bucky gave her one of those warm smiles that crinkled up the corners of his eyes and made all her insides turn into gooey liquid. She was in so much trouble with him already.

 

* * *

 

“Darcy.”

She let go of the pendant necklace she’d been admiring for the past five minutes and looked over her shoulder at her father. He tilted his head to the side, indicating that he’d like her to cross the three yards separating them to speak with him in a corner of the store.

After a tense and awkward breakfast that involved stilted conversations and lots of heavy looks from her father in Bucky’s direction, her oblivious mother had decided they should go to a couple of antiques stores just up the coast and grab lunch on their way home. Darcy readily agreed because at least they could do something other than sitting in the living room and staring each other down.

She and Bucky had ridden in the back while her father navigated the morning traffic. Tourist season was in full swing with every other car bearing an out-of-state license plate. She searched the store for Bucky, finding him next to her mother. Nora Lewis had her hand on his right forearm as she pointed out the merits of a small bench near the door of the old farmhouse-turned-antique-store. Her mother was in absolute love with Bucky, but that was hardly a surprise when he looked like that and smiled like that. Like he’d just smiled at her right now when she’d caught his eye. Darcy gave him an apologetic look which made him shake his head, dismissing the apology.

“I don’t have an opinion on anything,” she told her dad as she walked around the red velvet settee in the middle of the floor. “You know antiquing isn’t my thing.”

He looked so much older than she’d been prepared for. Those five years on his own must have been hard. He’d had Annie, her brother’s wife, and his youngest grandchild, but that wasn’t the same as having his wife or his son. Or his daughter, she thought. She could see he had questions, but they hadn’t been alone since she’d arrived. They still weren’t really alone, but her mother was over there looking at Bucky like he was the son-in-law she never knew she wanted. No one else was paying attention to her and her father in this little shop.

“Are you okay, sweet pea?” he murmured.

“I’m fine, dad.” When he didn’t reply with anything but a hard stare, she said, “I didn’t think you were going to call my boyfriend out.”

He took a step closer to her. “I hope you know who he is.”

“Yeah, dad, I know. How’d you recognize him? He doesn’t look much like those old pictures from the forties or even those bullshit surveillance stills from a couple of years back.”

Her dad shook his head. “There was something off about him. He didn’t act like a thirty-something man. And you know I love history, especially—”

“Captain America,” she finished for him. “I know. I forgot about you being a Cap fanboy, though. Probably should have remembered.”

“Does he treat you right?”

She laughed nervously. “Dad, geez. Yes, but can we not talk about this now or, like, ever?”

“Do you know everything, Darcy?”

“I know enough. I’m not afraid of him and you shouldn’t be either. You also shouldn’t be threatening him with shotguns that you don’t even own.”

“He doesn’t know that,” he father whispered.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Dad, I like him. Please don’t be weird about this. Look, mom even likes him.”

“Your mother thinks he’s handsome.” Her father narrowed his eyes. “And she wants more grandbabies.”

She felt her cheeks heat as she turned away. “Oh my god, we are not having this conversation.”

“How did you meet him?” her dad asked, changing the subject.

She sat down on the settee and looked up at him. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his khaki pants. “Exactly how I told you. Jane and I ended up in Albany at their temporary headquarters. She’s working with Dr. Banner and Dr. Pym on science stuff, and I met Bucky the first day we got there. He carried my bags and was nice and we went out on a date or whatever and… you know…”

“Do you love him?”

“ _Dad_. I’ve known him for like a month.”

“You brought him here to visit us.”

“Right. Because mom was trying to set me up with everyone in town under the age of forty-five who isn’t married. Plus, I like being around him. He’s… fun.”

She looked over at Bucky. His gaze was on her already. He didn’t look away when she locked eyes with him. Instead, he gave her that sweet smile that made the butterflies in her stomach kick up and her mind go into some sort of tailspin as she tried to ignore how special he made her feel.

“It’s a little hard for me to wrap my head around my little girl dating Sergeant Bucky Barnes, a war hero who supposedly died before I was even born. I had toys of him when I was a kid, complete with a sniper rifle.”

Bucky slid his gaze away and turned to the side to look at something her mom was pointing out.

“I think he wants a fresh start, dad. He said he doesn’t want to live in the past. The forties were a long time ago and a lot has happened since then.”

“Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.”

She stood up and walked over to some framed paintings of the ocean on the wall. They were discolored with age. “I don’t think anyone is ignoring it, especially not Bucky. I just think he’s ready to, like, move forward.”

“So, he’s moving forward with you?” her dad asked as he stood behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“If that’s what he wants.”

“Is that what you want?”

She stared at the picture of crashing waves smacking against a rocky cliff, her eyes unfocused and the scene blurry. “Yeah, that’s what I want,” she answered honestly. It hurt, but only a little, to admit to herself that she wished it could be that way even though she knew it wasn’t in the cards. “Do you have a problem with that?” she asked.

Her dad sighed. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into, sweet pea. His life is… difficult.”

“My life hasn’t been exactly normal, dad,” she said, still looking at the white-capped waves with an unfocused gaze.

“I know. I’m proud of you, Darcy. You mom is, too. We just miss you.”

Darcy turned around to look at her dad, sinuses burning as they foretold tears. “I feel like I’m not who you want me to be.”

He smiled at her, wetness gathering on his lower lids just like it was on hers. “Sweet pea, you’re exactly who I want you to be. At first I was surprised at you bringing Bucky Barnes home and telling me he’s your boyfriend and then I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.”

“Because I’m crazy?” she asked.

“Because it takes someone extraordinary to realize how amazing you are. He didn’t stand a chance, sweet pea.”

Darcy laughed and tried to wipe the tears from her eyes without ruining her mascara. “You want some crackers with that cheese, dad?”

Her question made him laugh, too. “No, I want some cheese with that whine.”

Bringing her fist up, she lightly punched him on the shoulder. “Shut up with the dad jokes. It’s embarrassing.”

Her dad’s eyes flicked over to the right where Bucky and her mother were standing by the cash register. “I’m only okay with this because I think he cares about you.”

“Oh yeah? How did you deduce this in the last twenty-four hours?”

“Last night he told me that he’d do anything for you, and I believe every word he said.”

Did she eat something that caused an allergic reaction? Her throat felt like it was closing up, making it hard to breathe. “Oh yeah?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “Well, I got an oceanfront house to sell you in Kansas, then.”

“You think I’m joking, but I’m not,” he said, squeezing her shoulder and steering her over to where Bucky was standing by the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all are so wonderful. Thank you for reading and commenting and showing love. I really appreciate it and so does my drive to write. So, Bucky came clean about his identity, but he's still holding back a bit about his time as HYDRA's captive and weapon. Maybe he'll confess another day. Or maybe Darcy will spill the beans and tell him that she saw his file. Coming up tomorrow: another not-a-date and maybe even a little PDA or something resembling it.


	11. Chapter 11

> _”It’s always afternoon when I’m with you. We can waste away, go and play, Saturday vibes with you. Let’s go watch the sun kissing the moon. ‘Bout to go insane, need a break, wanna feel something new.” - Medasin feat.. Kathleen (Always Afternoon)_

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” her mother asked. “They have the best estate sale—”

“Honey,” her father said, reaching out to touch her mother’s hand on the table. “She lives in a furnished studio apartment. What is she going to do with a farmhouse table from an estate sale?” He looked up and met Darcy’s gaze. “Let these kids go do their own thing this afternoon.”

Her mom nodded, a smile growing on her face. “Of course. Of course. I’m monopolizing your wonderful man’s time,” she told Darcy. “You two should spend the afternoon in town while we drive out to the last store.”

Darcy was ready to be away from the watchful eyes of her parents. They were both curious about her relationship with Bucky, but for very different reasons. “Wanna go see a movie?” she asked Bucky.

He looked at her with a steady, unwavering gaze that made her want to wiggle around in her seat. “Sure, doll, I’d love to.” There went those butterflies in her stomach again. He was very good at making it seem like they knew each other very well and that he was very interested in her.

“Got anything in mind?” she asked, pushing her mostly-empty plate toward the middle of the table.

“Whatever you want to see sounds perfect to me.”

Of fucking course he’d just hit her with all that charm when she was already a wreck from wondering what her parents were thinking and if her dad was still buying that she and Bucky were together now that he knew who Bucky was. Her mother was sitting across from her looking like she was going to go insane from happiness after hearing his utterly perfect response while he played the role of adoring boyfriend.

“Should we meet you guys back here at, like, four or something?” she asked her dad.

He nodded, and Darcy abruptly stood up, ready to get out of the pressure cooker lunch had been. Bucky was perfect; he had been since breakfast. He’d helped her out of the car and let her mother dote on him and put his hand at the small of Darcy’s back when they were walking down the sidewalk in front of her parents. He was so fucking good at this and she was losing her grip on reality because she wanted what was between them to be more than it actually was. Her father and his watchful gaze and her mother and her immense pleasure over Darcy being serious about someone for once in her life just made it that much harder to manage a meal with all three of them.

Bucky stood after her and gave her parents a nod. “I’ll have her back here in a few hours,” he told them. God, her mom was in absolute love with him. It was going to blow when she had to concoct a breakup story in the future. What a disaster.

“See ya. Bye,” she told them, turning to walk toward the exit of the tiny restaurant they’d had lunch in.

She was only three steps from the table when his right hand touched her left. He laced his fingers with hers. When she faltered, he bounced his shoulder into hers and said, “Keep walking. Your guy is allowed to hold your hand, right?”

Darcy blew out a shuddering breath and squeezed his hand. “Yep.” Once they stepped out of the door, he pulled her down the sidewalk with a gentle tug. “What movie do you want to see?” she asked him again.

“You pick,” he told her. “Can we have popcorn and Coca-Cola?”

“Wait, are you having a good time?” she asked with a laugh, letting him lead her.

“Sure. I feel like I’m in a dream and all the bad things can’t touch me,” he said. After he made that admission, he stopped and dropped his gaze to the sidewalk between them, huffing out a disbelieving breath. “I don’t know when this feeling is going to stop, but I’m enjoying it right now.”

Darcy squeezed his hand again. “Well, let’s keep riding this very strange little wave of happiness,” she said, feeling giddy for him and with him.

 

* * *

 

He bought the tickets while she bought the snacks. Darcy could barely carry the popcorn and candy, much less the extra large cup of Coke. It was cheaper to buy one huge one than two regular ones. They’d already shared a drink and ice cream. He didn’t seem to have a problem with sharing, and she certainly didn’t mind it.

They settled into the back row of the almost-empty theater and ate half the popcorn while they waited for the movie to start. “Thanks for being so good with my parents,” she told him after taking a long drink from the Coke between them.

“Am I good with them?” he asked.

She reached into the bucket of popcorn on his lap. “You are. They love you.”

“Even your dad?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Especially my dad. He’s playing it cool, but he’s a fan. When I was little, he gave me so many books on Captain America and the Howling Commandos, but I was more interested in other things that were not so… historical.”

“You saying you don’t think I’m interesting?” he asked with a grin, holding the popcorn just out of her reach.

She leaned over him, her hand braced on his knee as she grabbed a handful. Bucky laughed and finally relented by moving the bucket back to his lap. “I’m saying you’re way more interesting than a Captain America coloring book that had crude drawings of you in it. They didn’t really capture how hot you are,” she told him.

He laughed again. “You’re crazy, doll.”

The lights dimmed and the previews started, so she didn’t have time to reply. Instead, she did something that she’d been wanting to do for a very long time. Darcy leaned over the armrest between them and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before dropping back into her seat and fixing her gaze on the screen. She saw him turn his head to look at her, but she didn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

He took her hand in his as they made their way down the sidewalk. The sun was bright, but the temperature was still comfortably in the low-seventies. “Gotta keep up appearances,” he whispered in her ear.

His reasoning disappointed her. Darcy wanted him to hold her hand because he wanted to, not because it was part of the plan to convince her parents they were dating. She could see her mother and father sitting on a bench a block down the little street that was lined with shops. They’d gotten ice cream and had their heads together as they watched Darcy and Bucky approach.

“I wish I knew what they are saying,” she told Bucky.

He looked down at her and then back at her parents. “Your mom just told your dad that you look happy. Your dad says I better not break your heart.”

“You can hear them?”

“If I focus. You know they injected me with a serum similar to the one they gave Steve, right?”

“Yeah, but I guess I didn’t think about the super hearing.” Darcy stopped walking and turned toward him. “Have you heard me talking about you?” She searched her memory for times when he was present and she said something to herself or someone else about him.

“I’ve tried not to eavesdrop on you,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “That’s really sweet of you, Bucky. What a fucking gentleman.”

“I try.” He shifted his eyes toward her parents without actually turning his head and giving them away. “Your dad says I better keep my hands to myself.”

Darcy was still holding Bucky’s right hand in her left. She gave a tug, encouraging him to step into her space. He smiled at her and did as she’d urged. “You wanna mess with them?” she murmured. The way he was looking at her made Darcy’s heart race.

“What do you have in mind?” he whispered, taking her other hand. In the back of her mind, she registered that she was holding both his hands now and one of them was covered in a flesh-colored glove. It looked more real than it felt, but she still couldn’t really tell there was a vibranium cybernetic hand in there.

“A little PDA,” she said.

“Well, we did agree that we are that kind of couple, I guess,” he replied stepping forward and forcing Darcy to retreat a step. Her back was against the brick exterior of a little bookstore. Bucky took another step forward. His body was almost flush against hers now. “Is this okay?” he asked.

“Mmm, hmm,” Darcy replied, looking up into his blue eyes.

Bucky dipped his head down until his lips were next to her ear. “Your dad isn’t too happy with me,” he whispered.

“But I am,” she told him. “Fuck, you smell good.”

“You, too,” he murmured, his lips brushing her ear.

Darcy shivered at the intimate touch. “What do I smell like?”

He pressed his nose to the side of her neck and inhaled deeply. “I don’t know,” he finally said, “but I like it.”

Bucky moved the tip of his nose up her neck and over her jawline. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her face as he let his lips hover over her mouth.

“They think I’m kissing you,” Bucky whispered. His head was tilted so she couldn’t see her parents and they couldn’t see her either.

She could barely breathe as she stood there, the fingers of each hand laced with his. A tilt of her chin and leaning forward a fraction of an inch was all it would take for the kiss to be reality. “I’d say something really witty right now, but my brain is a little scrambled.”

He pulled back, chuckling and dropping his gaze to the ground like he was suddenly shy. Darcy wanted another shot. She’d been so close to closing the distance between their lips and actually kissing him on the mouth like she’d wanted to do since that first day when he’d rescued her from lugging the equipment inside by herself.

“We should go before your dad kills me.”

“I assure you he doesn’t have a gun,” she told Bucky as he released her right hand and tugged her left until she was standing next to him in the middle of the sidewalk.

He leaned his head down and said, “Your mom looks scary.”

“She looks manically happy. Oh god, this family dinner is going to be… insane. It will be second only to the one when I have to tell them that you and I broke up.”

He squeezed her hand. “We’re breaking up?”

“Eventually,” Darcy told him. “You’re out of my league anyway. Plus, you can’t be my fake boyfriend forever, right?”

He didn’t look at her when he said, “Right.” Darcy wanted to be disappointed with the way he had so readily agreed, but she had no right to be. He was just doing her a favor. This wasn’t for real even if it felt like it was sometimes.

 

* * *

 

What was it like to be as oblivious as her mother? The woman had no clue who Bucky was. Darcy wondered how long it would take her dad before he eventually clued her into the fact that Darcy was dating a super soldier who was written about in history books.

Bucky and Darcy had helped her prepare dinner, washing and chopping and getting the good China out of the server. Darcy’s brother, Adam, arrived with his wife Annie just before dinner. A little six-year-old boy ran through the back door and into the living room to jump into Darcy’s father’s lap. “Adrien! Slow down!” Annie yelled, dropping her purse on the kitchen table and bending over to deposit her daughter, Sarah, on the floor. The little girl was a year older than when Darcy had last seen her, but the little boy was unrecognizable. He’d been just over one-year-old a few months ago. Or five years ago, depending on whether you were in Darcy’s shoes or Annie’s.

Her stomach clenched in discomfort as she squatted down to say hello her niece. “Hey, Sarah-bear. Remember me?”

The little girl turned to run back and hide behind her mother’s leg. “Hey,” Annie told Darcy. “Long time, no see.”

“Dee!” Adam yelled as he closed the door behind himself. Darcy braced herself as he threw his arms around her in a bear hug.

“Missed you, too, asshole,” she said, hugging him back.

“Where is this boyfriend mom told me about?” Adam asked, releasing her and turning to look around the room. When his gaze fell on Bucky standing by the fridge, his eyes widened. “Oh. Wow. Okay. Nice to meet you, dude,” Adam said, extending his hand to Bucky.

Darcy tried to hide her smile. Adam had no doubt been expecting someone a little less hot and intimidating. Surprising him felt good. Annie widened her eyes when she caught Darcy’s gaze. Grinning, Darcy just shrugged. Yeah, she didn’t know how she managed to score that hottie either. It was a real shame this was all fake.

“Wow. So, you and Dar, huh? What, uh… how’d that happen?” Adam asked Bucky.

Darcy opened her mouth to tell her brother to shut his, but her mother spoke up first. “Adam Lewis, they are perfect together.” Yeah, the eventual breakup conversation was going to be difficult.

 

* * *

 

By the end of the evening, Darcy had made friends with her niece and nephew. Things would have been more difficult to swallow if she’d spent more time with the kids before the incident. However, only seeing them infrequently allowed her to adjust to Adrien growing up so quickly. She couldn’t imagine how it had felt for Adam to come back into the picture after five years to find his son in school and five years gone. What a fucking disaster.

She helped tie the kids’ shoes as Annie packed up the toys. Adam was doing his best to get information out of Bucky about what he did for the Avengers, but Bucky was a pro at deflecting questions or answering them without giving away any meaningful information. Darcy watched her dad as he listened to the conversation. She wondered how long he’d keep Bucky’s secret.

“Adam, let’s go,” Annie said. “It’s past their bedtime.”

It _was_ late. The clock on the kitchen wall said it was almost ten-thirty. She just wanted to put on her pajamas and lie in bed with Bucky. Not that anything was going to happen, but she found she liked to be alone with him. There was comfortable peace where she could leave some things unsaid because he knew what she meant or say silly things without him thinking she was crazy.

Adam gave her a hug on his way out the door. “I like him,” he whispered in her ear.

“Me too,” she answered honestly, wondering if Bucky heard what they’d just said to each other. Probably. What would he think?

She finished helping her mother load the dishwasher while Bucky sat on a stool at the island and watched her. Darcy could feel his eyes on her as she moved around the kitchen, wiping down the counters so her mother didn’t have to do all the cleanup on her own. When everything was nearly done, she kissed her mom on the cheek and said, “I’m wiped out. We’re gonna go to bed.”

“Night, honey,” her mom said. “Good night, Bucky.” Darcy rolled her eyes at her mother’s obvious love of her choice in fake boyfriend.

Before bidding her dad goodnight, Darcy snagged a bottle of wine off the rack on the wall by the kitchen door. Bucky followed behind, brushing a hand over the small of her back. She almost shivered at the light touch.

“Night, dad,” she said, bending down to kiss his cheek. He was sitting in his lounge chair in front of the television.

He raised his brows at the wine but didn’t verbalize his question.

“After dinner fun,” she said.

“Tell your _young_ man to behave himself,” he replied.

“He always does,” she whispered back. “Much to my disappointment.”

Before her dad had a chance to reply, she handed the bottle to Bucky and hooked her newly-freed hand around the elbow of his right arm, pulling him down the hallway. “Come on, boyfriend.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, following her down the hall and into her old bedroom.

Once they were there, Darcy pulled the corkscrew out of the back pocket of her jeans and handed it to him. “I’m gonna get my pajamas on. Can you open that?”

His eyes didn’t betray anything as he nodded once. Darcy washed her face and slipped into her pajamas from the night before. She wondered what he thought of them and if he liked what he saw. It was a fleeting, silly thought. The man was a legend and she was just a dumb girl who wanted to feel special. By the time she got back to the bedroom, he was in that pair of drawstring pants that rode low on his hips and the worn black henley that exposed some of his chest.

“You forgot the glasses,” he said, nodding at the open wine bottle on the nightstand.

“We’re gonna be savages and drink straight from the bottle,” she said.

His eyes tracked her as she walked across the room and plugged her phone into the aux cord of her old stereo system. Self-consciousness was bouncing around in her head and she tried like hell not to think of covering her ass or wrapping a blanket around her body so he couldn’t see all the flaws she could see every day in the mirror.

She navigated the music app on her phone and selected a playlist she’d made to wind down at the end of a long day. It was mostly ambient electro-pop, understated R&B, and a smattering of Americana. After adjusting the volume, she turned around to find him standing there with his hands on his hips and his eyes studying her. She couldn’t quite place the look on his face.

“Is that glove comfortable to wear all the time?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter one way or another,” he said, lifting his left hand up. Carefully, he pulled at the fingertips of the glove and removed it. The hand beneath was metallic black with what appeared to be burnished gold at the joints. She looked from his hand to his face to find him watching her, his expression wary and maybe a bit worried.

“It’s beautiful,” she told him.

“Doll,” he said, shaking his head in disagreement.

“It is, Bucky. Am I allowed to touch it?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking more uncomfortable than she’d been when she’d walked into the room in her itty-bitty pajama set. “You can,” he murmured. “If you want,” was tacked onto the end.

Darcy slowly walked over to stand in front of him. She was close enough to feel the heat coming off his body now that he’d shed the ever-present leather jacket in favor of the thin cotton material of the henley. Holding her hand out, she waited for him to meet her halfway. He only hesitated a moment before lifting his left hand up and placing it on top of hers, their palms together and the tips of his fingers resting over the pulse point at her wrist.

Slowly and with care, she took his hand in both of hers. The material was smooth and the joints were so well constructed they were almost seamless as she manipulated his hand. Darcy curled his fingers into his palm and then stretched them out, tracing the soft gold lines with the tip of her index finger. “This is amazing,” she told him.

Bucky exhaled a shuddering breath like he’d been holding it in and only now managed to release it. She could feel the tension in his body and realized that maybe this was a bigger step for him than she’d thought. He’d been hiding his hand and arm from her for weeks. Had he actually been afraid to show her, not because she’d know who he was but because he was worried she’d think he was a freak?

Slowly, giving him time to stop her, she pushed the sleeve of his shirt up so she could see the way his hand tapered into his wrist and widened out into his forearm. She only exposed a few scant inches before he swallowed audibly. “Why do you hide it?” she whispered, tugging the sleeve back down.

He pulled his hand out of her grasp and used it to push his hair back. “Do you even need to ask that question?” he said softly. “It makes people uncomfortable.”

“Not me. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“Why?” he asked, his eyes searching her face.

Darcy shrugged and walked over to the nightstand where he’d put the bottle of wine she’d asked him to open. Picking it up by the neck, she made her way to the bay window on the other side of the room. It had been her favorite place as a teenager. She’d sat there on the cushions of the window seat, reading books or talking to her friends on the phone. “It just doesn’t. Maybe because I trust you.”

“Doll, I don’t think I’m the best person to put your trust in. You don’t know all the things I’ve done.”

“I know you were brainwashed and used as a weapon by HYDRA. I was in California when all that stuff happened in D.C., when the intel got blasted all over the news. Obviously, I’m not, like, privy to all the dirty details because I’m just Jane’s assistant and the news makes me anxious nowadays, but… I know.” Liar, liar, lair, she repeated in her head. You know every last dirty detail and you’re lying.

She sat down on the window seat and pulled her legs up to criss-cross them. The shorts rode up high on her thighs, and she self-consciously pulled the hem of her shirt down to cover her crotch. At least it was dark. Neither of them had turned the lights on, so the only illumination was from outside.

“You don’t know everything,” he told her, voice resolute.

Darcy wanted to open her mouth and confess that she probably knew more than he thought since she’d hacked into his file and read his business. She couldn’t seem to make the words come, though. He was in a brittle place right now; she was afraid if she pushed him then he’d shatter. And then this little dance they were having would be over. “I know enough,” she replied. “Come sit down and share this with me.”

Holding up the bottle, she leaned forward and patted the cushion in front of her. Bucky sighed before relenting and sitting down next to her. Darcy was turned sideways in the window seat, but he was sitting with his back to the window and his feet flat on the floor like it was a chair. His profile was handsome, even with his long hair partially obscuring it. After taking a swig of the wine, she offered the bottle to him.

Bucky turned his head and looked at the bottle before looking back up at her. “I metabolize it too quickly.”

She raised her brows. “I’m not trying to get you drunk. You know, some people drink wine because they like the taste.”

“Is that what you do?”

“No, I drink it to get drunk.”

“Is that what you want to do? Get drunk?”

She laughed softly. “No, but it’s been a long day and I just want to relax with you away from… everything.”

He accepted the bottle and took a long drink before handing it back to her. “It’s good,” Bucky said.

She traced the contours of his profile with her gaze before looking down to his slightly slumped shoulders. “Thank you for this weekend, Bucky. It’s been a million times better with you here.”

Glancing over at her, he said, “Has it?”

“Oh god, yes. I actually had fun today. Also, you’re like my mom’s weakness. She can’t handle all those manners inside that package.”

He smiled and shook his head. His gaze dropped to the floor.

“Why do you get all shy when I even allude to you being a hottie,” Darcy asked, taking another drink.

He reached over and took the bottle from her so he could have another, too. “Haven’t thought of myself in that way for a long time. It’s… strange.”

“I thought you were the ladies’ man of the Howling Commandos.”

Bucky shook his head again. “I… haven’t been that guy in… decades.”

“That’s good,” she said, giving him a little smile.

He jerked his head in her direction, obviously not expecting that answer. “Is it?”

Darcy nodded gravely. “Oh, yeah. I mean, I’d be really bummed if you were flirting with other girls while you’re pretending to be my fake boyfriend.”

Chuckling, Bucky pushed his hair back again and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “I wouldn’t dream of looking at another girl when the prettiest one is already pretending to be mine,” he murmured, looking over his shoulder at her.

Darcy’s heartbeat was in her throat. “Oh. My. God. You _do_ still have some of that flirty charm from the forties.” She fanned herself. “Be careful where you point that. I almost fainted.”

This time he threw his head back and laughed loudly. “I’m glad I came with you this weekend. I actually wish it wasn’t over tomorrow.”

Darcy wanted to tell him that it didn’t really have to be over. They could pretend back at the base. Or they could make it real and official. She’d take whatever he’d give her because she was spiraling down in a severe case of infatuation with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up tomorrow: Bucky will tell you all about how it feels when Darcy gets her hands on his hair. Also, he takes his shirt off and Darcy gets distracted by the muscles.


	12. Chapter 12

> _”Grab hold of me. Gentle love, but touch passionately. I’ll give you my blessing.” - Sabrina Claudio (Belong to You)_

She was so close, all that skin within reach of his hands. _Hands_ plural because she’d wanted to touch his cybernetic one. She’d not been the slightest bit afraid of it. The thought of leaning in and grabbing her waist in his hands, pulling her toward him as he bent over her and kissed those full lips… The thought of it made him light-headed.

He took another drink of the wine and passed the bottle back to her, deliberately holding it in such a way that she’d graze his right hand with her fingertips. He wanted to feel the softness of her skin against his since he was too chickenshit to make a move. It’s self-preservation, Bucky told himself. This little dream was doomed to end sooner or later. It’d fizzle out when some other guy came along who could actually give her what she deserved or—more likely—she’d distance herself when she found out the details of those years with HYDRA.

Sure, information was out there about his role with the terrorist organization, but the specific details of every murder he’d committed weren’t so public. He was Bucky Barnes, the reformed assassin who had been mentally compromised to the point that he’d murdered hundreds—children even—for HYDRA. This made most people wary of him because they weren’t sure if he’d snap and revert. The people who did get close usually distanced themselves when they realized exactly how much blood he’d spilled.

There were exceptions, of course. Steve, Sam, T’Challa, Wanda, Bruce. They were all people who had the ability to understand the world he’d been existing in since he fell from the train. Others, especially civilians, usually didn’t understand and would back away slowly when they found out.

He wanted to believe she’d be different. Different like Shuri. Shuri was too smart and, despite her bravado, she had the biggest heart of anyone he’d met since Steve Rogers. But his relationship with Shuri was like that of an uncle. It had to be easier to accept the dark past of your wacky old Uncle Bucky than to accept that the man who wanted a romantic relationship with you had killed hundreds of people, some of them completely innocent. He wanted to believe that Darcy wouldn’t care about that because she cared about him too much, but deep down he knew there was a good chance she’d run. And that would cut deep.

“What a day,” Darcy said, breaking into his thoughts.

“Mmm,” he agreed as he looked down at the floor between his feet.

“You were amazing, of course.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. She was sitting there in those barely-there cotton pajamas with her dark hair framing her face and her lips just a bit red, maybe from the wine. She was absolutely beautiful and the urge to touch her was thrumming through his brain like a heartbeat. “Was I?” Bucky asked.

“You were so good it almost felt real,” Darcy said.

Bucky wanted to tell her it was real to him, but he couldn’t seem to put those words in an order that would make sense and not result in his feelings being laid bare for her to see. “You made it easy on me,” was what he decided to say. It didn’t feel like enough, but it was all he could manage.

“You look tired.” Her voice was soft, sweet. “This weekend didn’t overload your anxiety, did it?”

“No. I’m fine,” Bucky told her. “Like I said, I had a good time.” A lock of hair fell forward and he absently flicked it back.

Darcy took a swig of the wine and held it out to him. “You know, it’s really unfair that your hair is prettier than mine.”

He accepted the bottle and straightened his back before drinking. “I don’t know about that.”

“Is it weird that I’ve been wanting to play with it?” She scrunched her nose up. “Yeah, okay, that does sound weird when I say it like that.”

“You want to play with my hair?” he asked.

She grabbed the bottle of wine from him and took another drink before handing it back. “Yeah, it looks so soft. And this is the wine talking. I’m not usually this creepy.”

He chuckled and took a long drink. The bottle was almost empty. “It’s not creepy,” Bucky whispered.

She shifted her ass from side to side on the cushion but didn’t move from her spot. “Well, if it’s not creepy, then come here.” Darcy patted the spot where her ankles crossed over each other as she sat there with her legs crisscrossed.

“What?” he asked.

She took the bottle from him. After taking another drink, she sat it on the floor next to her and patted her legs again. “You look sad and exhausted and anxious. Whenever I feel that way, someone playing with my hair makes me feel better.”

“Darcy,” he said, his voice almost breaking on her name. He didn’t know if he could cope with her touching him like that even though it sounded heavenly.

“Don’t make it weird,” she said. “Just one friend trying to help another friend feel better.”

“Is that what this is?” he asked.

She exhaled a breathy laugh. “I have no idea what this is. Come on, scoot.”

He was weak and starved for touch. During his two years in Wakanda, Bucky had learned to forgive himself as much as was possible for what he’d been forced to do during those dark years he’d been a captive of HYDRA. He’d spent time in nature, watching the sun rise and set, watching time pass, which was something not afforded to him during those days as the Winter Soldier. He’d found a measure of peace in Wakanda, but he’d not managed to find comfort in touch. He didn’t recoil from a handshake or even an embrace from a good friend. He didn’t feel like he’d been burned when someone passed him a bowl of food and brushed his knuckles with their hand. But he’d never willingly sought out someone’s touch.

Feeling slightly out-of-body, he turned his back to her and swung his legs up onto the window seat. As he leaned back, she placed one hand on his right shoulder and the other hand at the base of his head, guiding him down. The pressure of her fingers there on his neck made it difficult for him to pull in a full breath. He closed his eyes and trusted her to help him find where she wanted him. He hadn’t thought he’d be capable of letting go like this and letting her do that work, but it felt so fucking good to let it happen.

The back of his neck hit the cradle made where her ankles crossed. It shouldn’t have been comfortable, but it felt like perfection. It felt like he could lie here all night. Gently, she tilted his head, gathering his hair to pull it free so it laid in the empty space between her legs. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Bucky didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded, keeping his eyes closed tightly.

“You’re breathing really fast, Bucky. If I’m making you uncomfortable—”

“No,” he finally managed to blurt out. “I’m okay.”

She brushed her hand over his hair lightly. “I’m sorry. This afternoon you seemed okay with touching. We almost fake-kissed on the sidewalk. I thought this would be—”

“It’s fine. Perfect. Please,” he said, his tone almost begging.

“Okay,” she whispered before she ran the tips of her fingers through his hair, grazing his scalp.

Bucky shivered at her light touch. “This is different,” he told her.

“Different than holding hands and almost making out on the sidewalk in front of my parents?”

“Yeah. It’s you… touching me. Alone.” Did that even make sense? He couldn’t find the right words to make her understand.

She traced his hairline with the tip of her index finger as Bucky tried to slow his breathing. “I guess it _is_ different,” she whispered, carding her fingers through his long hair and dragging her hand down, picking out the tangles as she went. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

He wanted to tell her never to stop because he hadn’t felt anything this good in forever. The past few years had been a series of disasters with just enough space to barely catch his breath. The bottom had just fallen out again, and Bucky had assumed it would take more time than this to get to a point where he could let go the way he was with her. Why did he trust her this much? He could barely say he knew her.

Bucky exhaled a deep breath and tried to let go of the tension in his body. Maybe he didn’t know her as well as he knew Steve or even Sam, but he trusted her. He could let down his guard and know she wouldn’t tear him apart. She was so _kind_ it broke his heart. Pure kindness wasn’t something he’d come across much at all. “Thank you,” he whispered, opening his eyes and looking up at her.

Darcy smiled down at him and kept brushing out his hair with her fingers. “Does it feel good?” Every now and then she’d scrape her nails across his scalp and goosebumps would lift up on the skin of his right arm.

“It feels so good,” he told her, closing his eyes again. The music was soft with a heavy beat that matched his heart as it slowed down to a normal speed. This all felt like a cocoon, so far removed from the world. Velvety music and her hands touching him as if she enjoyed it.

“Your hair is as soft as I thought,” she said, dancing her fingertips over the shells of each of his ears before diving back into his hair.

“I haven’t washed it recently.”

“I know. I’m jealous.” Her nails scratched his scalp right behind his ears, making Bucky shiver again. “You like that?” she asked, the smile evident in her voice.

“I like it all,” Bucky replied, meaning each of those four words to his core. He liked everything she’d done or was doing, from the moment he’d offered to help her with those bags to this very moment.

Her gentle hands sifted through the strands of his hair as she said, “Good.”

After a full minute of her pulling him into a lazy, relaxed state, he said, “When exactly did you figure out who I am?”

Darcy chuckled. “I’m slow on the uptake. I didn’t put the pieces together until right before you left on that last mission. I was actually searching your name on the internet when you walked in to say you were leaving.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

She tapped the tip of his nose with her index finger before dragging the pad of it up the length of his nose to tap between his eyes. “Don’t apologize. You don’t owe me explanations.”

“I wanted to tell you so badly.” He paused and then said, “There’s more you don’t know, but I don’t know how to say it.”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”

Bucky looked up at her as she dragged her nails from the base of his skull to the crown of his head. “God, that feels so good.”

“Yeah? I told you. Someone playing with your hair is the absolute best. So relaxing, right?”

“Mmm,” he agreed, letting his eyes flutter closed.

“How are you adjusting to life outside of Wakanda?” she asked.

He exhaled the breath he’d been holding. “It’s been… hectic. I mean, it was a battle in Wakanda and then the next thing I know, I’m back and we’re being sent through a portal over here to New York to help in what feels like the same damn battle. And then… then Steve left and came back and left again… Honestly, my head’s spinning.”

“So, Steve is living in another reality with a wife and kids and he’s _not_ Captain America?”

“Not in that reality, no. I’m sure the little punk couldn’t keep his nose out of everything, but in order to not blow it, he needed to keep his little life as quiet as possible.”

She smoothed his forehead with her fingers. “You said he came back for a few minutes, right?”

“To hand over his shield to Sam. He left right after. He has a whole life out there, you know? A good life.”

“But you miss him.”

He blinked to prevent the tears from gathering in his eyes. “Yeah, I miss him, but… I’m happy for him. He deserves it all. No one deserves it more than Steve.”

“You said you never thought of going back. Never?”

He mentally recoiled at the thought. “Never. The past ain’t a place I want to be. This right here is… perfect.”

“Right here, right now?”

“Right here, right now,” Bucky agreed. “No place better.”

She traced his hairline. “I didn’t think you’d be such a soft touch and so easy to please.”

“Maybe you’re just really good at this. I could fall asleep right here.”

Darcy tugged on his ear before resuming combing her fingers through his hair again. “Don’t you dare. You’re too big for me to lift into the bed.”

 

* * *

 

After he’d told her about his time in Wakanda and the whirlwind that had happened when Thanos had arrived with his ships, Bucky had nearly done exactly what he’d threatened and fallen asleep while she played with his hair. He never would have thought he could find this level of comfort with someone, not after all he’d been through and done. She just made it so easy.

“Are you asleep?” she whispered.

Bucky opened his eyes and looked up to see her face hovering over his and her hair falling down in a curtain around them. “Almost,” he whispered back.

“I think my feet are asleep,” Darcy said with a gentle smile.

Her admission made him chuckle even if he felt a little guilty that she’d probably been uncomfortable. He pushed himself up to a seated position and said, “I’m sorry.”

Slapping the back of her hand against his arm, she uncrossed her legs with a wince. “Don’t apologize,” she told him. Bucky watched as she wiggled her bare feet, tapping them onto the floor now and then in an attempt to return blood flow to them. “Are you going to argue with me about sharing a bed tonight?”

“No,” he replied, standing up and offering her his left hand. Watching her reach up and take it without any hesitation lifted a weight he didn’t know he’d been carrying.

Darcy squeezed his hand with hers. “Can you feel that?” she asked before releasing her hold.

“Yes. I can actually feel a lot with it. Definitely better than the one I had before, the one HYDRA gave me.”

“Well, Wakanda is way cooler than HYDRA, so that would make sense. They’re, like, super advanced there, aren’t they?” She tucked one leg underneath her as she sat down on her side of the bed.

Bucky stood at the foot of the bed and looked at her, wishing he could do and say exactly what he wanted to in this moment. He’d love to crawl up the mattress and roll her beneath him and have her feel excitement instead of fear. Maybe she would let him and maybe she’d like it. It was the aftermath of his heart breaking because he couldn’t keep her that prevented him from acting, though. “Yeah,” he finally said, “it’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She tilted her head to the side and said, “Can I see your arm?”

He floundered for an answer to her blunt question.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy said quickly. “That was out of line. Just ignore me. I didn’t—”

“No,” he said, holding up a hand to stop the flood of apologies coming out of her mouth. “It’s okay. I… I guess I just assume it makes people uncomfortable so I try to keep it covered.”

“Well, your hand didn’t make me uncomfortable. I mean, it’s just a prosthetic. You shouldn’t feel like you have to hide it.”

After hesitating for a moment, he said, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, of course. But only if you want to.”

Bucky’s heart was beating faster than normal as he reached down and lifted the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head like he was ripping off a bandaid. He looked up to her face at the same moment her full lips parted and a forceful exhale of the breath she’d been holding came out. She was wide-eyed, but she didn’t appear scared. “Sorry, I have a lot of scars around the arm from the surgeries.”

“Uh, not looking at the scars,” she said, her eyes moving down his torso and back up.

He rolled the shoulder of his left arm and the nearly silent plates shifted to accommodate. “My arm broke when I fell from the train. HYDRA replaced it with one they’d made but, like I said, it wasn’t as nice as this one. It’s good not to have their insignia on my shoulder, too.”

“Right. _Right_. I’m supposed to be looking at the _arm,_ not the muscles,” she said. The room was so quiet he could hear her swallow.

Bucky hung his head and laughed softly. “Sweetheart, you’re doing great things for my self-esteem.”

“Well, you know, someone needs to help you join us in reality where you’re disgustingly attractive.” She leaned forward and squinted in the low light. “The arm is beautiful, Bucky.”

He walked over to her side of the bed, and Darcy shifted over so he could sit down next to her, his left arm closest. “I don’t know about beautiful. It’s well-made.”

When she reached out and took his arm in her hands, he had to suppress the urge to pull away, though he couldn’t prevent the gasp at the way she touched him without hesitation. “Oh, sorry,” she said, letting him go.

“No, doll. It’s okay. You just surprised me. You can touch it.” The little smile she gave him in response to his words made Bucky’s heart melt. He’d told her father that he’d do anything for her and it was the truth. No questions asked, he’d do anything she requested.

The plates shifted as she lifted his arm and examined it in the dim light of the bedroom. Bucky closed his eyes as her fingertips brushed over the ridged scar tissue on his shoulder. He wanted to apologize for it, but each time he’d tried to say he was sorry, she’d shut him down. “This is amazing, Bucky,” she whispered. “Don’t hide it.”

“I don’t want people to think—”

“No one thinks you’re trying to be intimidating or scary. And if they are intimidated, then it’s their problem, not yours. Or, if they’re intimidated, then it’s because they think you’re gonna steal their girlfriend. Or boyfriend.”

Bucky chuckled and moved his arm, watching the awe in her face as the plates shifted beneath her hands. “You only see the good things about me and that makes me nervous,” he admitted.

“Why? Isn’t that what everyone wants? For people to see only the good things about them?”

“The bad things are bound to come out. When they do, what if the good things aren’t enough?”

Darcy nodded her head as she released his arm. He missed her touch immediately. “That’s fair,” she said. “I guess we all want someone to see everything and think the good is way more important.” She shifted in the unmade bed and rearranged the sheets and blankets. “It’s too late to be talking about all that mess,” she told him.

She was right. Talking about how much he wished she could overlook all he’d done was a little too painful, especially when he wanted to live in this fantasy for one more night.

“Lie down and relax,” she said.

“You make this too easy on me,” Bucky told her.

“Well, I’m thankful you saved my weekend. For the record, I think your arm is awesome. I’m not afraid of it or you, and I don’t think you should feel like you have to hide who you are.” She laid herself down on the mattress, her hair spread over the pillow. “Ooh, wait. Are you keeping your identity on the down-low because of the legal issues Fury is helping you with?”

“Yes and no.”

“Well, you don’t need to hide it from me.”

She looked so beautiful right there in the bed. Her cheeks were flushed with the wine they’d drank and her pink lips looked so soft. In fact, every inch of her body looked soft and perfect, a place he’d like to get lost in if doing so wouldn’t end up hurting him more in the end. When he was with her, it was easy to forget that she didn’t know the extent of his past. The files were too sensitive to release to the general public. Unless Sam or Bruce or Wanda had told her, then she didn’t know. Bucky was confident they hadn’t talked to her about specifics.

“Thanks, doll,” he whispered as he dropped back onto the bed.

She flipped half of her sheet over his body. “We lost the blanket wall in the shuffle. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky told her. “I’m good with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics that begin each chapter are from my personal playlist of songs that helped inspire me as I wrote this fic. As I work on the project, I add songs to the playlist and listen to them on repeat during writing sessions. If you'd like a complete list of the songs and the ability to listen to them, you can check out this YouTube playlist: <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2o_A-FR3X3AVPRFMzp2qUXYRL-xOjB7X>
> 
> Tomorrow: you can't have a bed-sharing trope in a fic without a morning after scene in which they are all tangled up together.


	13. Chapter 13

_”Moods that take me and erase me and I’m painted black. Well you’ve suffered enough and warred with yourself. It’s time that you won.” - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (Falling Slowly)_

Darcy woke to a feeling of warmth. It wasn’t the humid, sweaty warmth of a hot summer night with no air conditioning; it was more comfortable and pleasant. She didn’t move, vacillating between waking and sleeping for a few moments, before opening her eyes to the yellowish light filtering in through the window. The sun was rising on the far side of the house and it cast a weak glow over the backyard.

At the same moment the light registered in her brain, she realized the warmth was caused by the body spooned up behind her. Bucky’s body. They’d forgone the blanket separating them the night before and somehow ended up so close she was sure she could feel every inch of his him. Her back was against his chest and the fronts of his thighs were right up against the backs of hers with his knees nestled in the cradle of hers. Darcy’s ass was pressed right up against his groin, and she could feel his erection.

She slammed her eyes shut. What was she supposed to do? His left arm was wrapped around her midsection and curled up so his hand was sandwiched between her tits. Was this some sort of dream? Opening her eyes again, she looked down at the dark vibrarium hand resting over her sternum. He was hard all over, but nothing had ever felt this comfortable. She wanted to shift her hips and push her ass back against him. Maybe he’d react and she could see what he was packing in those drawstring pants. They were loose enough and she could feel enough of him against her backside that she didn’t have any doubts he would have no problem satisfying her.

She clenched her teeth together. They were in her childhood bedroom with her parents probably asleep down the hall or up making a pot of coffee by now. She couldn’t try to tempt her way into sex with Bucky fucking Barnes. It was already crazy enough that he’d been playing her fake boyfriend all weekend.

Darcy could feel his breath on the back of her neck and on the shell of her ear. It was steady, rhythmic. In, out, in, out. He was definitely still asleep, and she was definitely a creep for enjoying this moment of vulnerability. She should move. She should slide out of bed and take a shower. Instead, she stayed right where she was, enjoying the weight of his arm and the rise and fall of his chest behind her. And maybe she enjoyed the major boner he had, too. This was the stuff of fantasies. She should try to commit how it felt to be held by him to memory so she could conjure it up on those nights she held her pillow because she was so tired of sleeping alone.

He shifted behind her, curling his arm tighter. It wasn’t too tight, though. She knew he could crush her with it, but the way he pulled her up against his body felt careful, almost reverential. His movement and the way his top leg slid over hers just the slightest bit placed his erection more firmly against her ass. She wanted to moan her approval and push back. Or maybe grab his hand and help him slide it inside the waistband of her shorts and panties. What would that cybernetic wonder do between her legs?

She sank her teeth into her bottom lip and tried to shake those thoughts. He was vulnerable and kind and had done his best to make this a good weekend for her. And she was repaying him by entertaining some sort of depraved fantasy. 

The moment he woke, she felt the change in his breathing. It went from slow and steady right into two breaths for every one he’d been pulling in before he woke. He didn’t move, but she could feel the tension pulling his muscles taut. She closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing to save him any embarrassment. “Darcy?” he whispered softly. “Are you awake?”

When she didn’t answer, he exhaled a long breath right on her neck. She wanted to shiver at the sensation but repressed the urge and waited for him to make a move. A few seconds ticked by and then she felt his nose against her neck, just behind and blow her earlobe. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled slowly. The left hand that was curled up between her boobs shifted and flattened out until his palm was over her heart. The room was quiet enough for her to hear him swallow as he laid there with her, his hand on her heart and lips hovering just over the pulsepoint on her neck. He hadn’t shifted his groin back so the sensation of being surrounded by Bucky was almost overwhelming.

What was probably only a minute, but felt like twenty, ticked by before Darcy knew she needed to break this strange trance they were both in. She pulled in a deeper breath and shifted her hips. Bucky’s reaction wasn’t as swift as she’d been expecting. Instead of pulling away like he’d been burned, he seemed to reluctantly slide his hips back so she couldn’t feel his erection any longer. He didn’t let go of her, though.

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Mmm, hmm,” she said in a rough, sleep-addled voice. “You’re comfy.”

He chuckled and she could feel the rumble in his chest. “You, too. I kinda woke up like this and didn’t want to move and wake you. Is this okay?”

“It’s wonderful. I never get morning snuggles. Keep doing what you’re going.”

Bucky slid his hand from that more intimate position between her breasts and just let his arm drape over her waist instead. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” she replied, resting her hand on top of his cybernetic one and lightly tracing the barely-there seams with her fingertips. “Did you sleep well?”

“Best sleep I’ve had in a long time,” he whispered in her ear.

“Same,” Darcy agreed. “I don’t want to get up and drive back.”

His breath on her neck and ear made Darcy shiver when he said, “I thought you were dreading this trip.”

“It wasn’t so bad and you’re part of the reason.”

Instead of replying, he shifted his head and inhaled deeply.

“Are you smelling my hair?”

“Maybe,” Bucky said, a smile evident in his voice.

“I need a shower. It probably smells like antique stores and buttered popcorn from yesterday.”

“Smells like you,” he whispered.

Darcy closed her eyes and said, “You keep saying that. What do I smell like?”

“You,” he replied with a chuckle.

A soft knock on the door made them both jump. Bucky rolled away from her and onto his back, pulling the sheet they were sharing up to his neck at the same time that her mother’s voice could be heard through the door. “Does Bucky like French toast?”

Darcy rolled her eyes and sat up on the edge of the bed. “Do you?” she asked him over her shoulder. When he pressed his right hand over his eyes and nodded, Darcy yelled back, “Yes! Make double.”

“Okay! Thank you, honey!” Her mom hummed as she walked back down the hall.

“She’s obsessed with you,” Darcy told him, standing up and stretching. It wasn’t until the hem of her shirt lifted up to reveal her midsection that she remembered to be self-conscious in front of the sexiest guy alive.

Bucky’s gaze flicked down to belly button. She dropped her arms and tugged on the shirt. “Does it bother you that she likes me?” he asked, lifting up on his elbows.

“No, but it’s gonna suck to tell her we broke up. She’ll be so sad. I think she’s planning the wedding,” Darcy said as she bent over and grabbed clean clothes from her bag on the floor.

“You breaking up with me?” he asked.

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Well, _that_ wouldn’t be believable. Obviously, the only reasonable explanation is that you’re going to break my heart and I won’t be able to even consider dating for at least a year.”

It was a joke and he smiled, but it looked strained and humorless. “I wouldn’t deserve you,” he said, nothing but sincerity in his blue eyes.

Instead of melting into a puddle of goo on her bedroom floor, Darcy laughed and said, “You’re right. You don’t deserve to be afflicted with me. I’m gonna grab a shower. You can have it after. Then breakfast and we can hit the road.”

Bucky sat up and rested his forearms on his knees as she stepped over to the door. “Darcy,” he said as she put her hand on the knob. She froze at his voice and waited for what he wanted to say. “Don’t say that kind of stuff about yourself. I could only be so lucky.”

She pressed her forehead to the doorframe. What did that even _mean_? Why did he have to be so sweet to her and give her these crazy ideas that someone like him was interested in her? “Flirt,” she accused before fleeing the room with her clothes clutched in her hand.

* * *

“Mom, really. This is a little intense,” Darcy said, watching her mother pack up a foam cooler she’d made Darcy’s father dig out of the basement with containers of leftovers from the previous night along with an entire peach pie. Nora said it was for Bucky. Bucky was standing by the table, talking with her father. When he looked up and caught Darcy’s eye, he smiled before looking over at her mother’s manic mothering.

“There are more two ice packs in the freezer, Darcy. Can you get them?”

Darcy was too busy watching her dad and Bucky talk, their voices hushed and their heads together. What were they saying?

“Darcy. Ice packs.”

She turned away from the two men talking and retrieved the ice for her mother. “Has dad said anything about Bucky?” she asked her mom.

Nora smiled. “Oh, I think he likes him. He said he’s a good man. For your dad that’s a glowing endorsement.” Zipping up the cooler, she said, “You two look so cute together, honey. I’m happy for you.”

“Do we?” Darcy asked, looking away from Bucky and her father.

“Of course. He’s obviously crazy about you. Kept watching you during dinner last night. He’s a dream.”

“He really is,” Darcy agreed, shifting her gaze back over to Bucky. He had on that leather jacket over a dark red T-shirt and black jeans. His wet hair was pulled back into a knot at the base of his skull. She’d taken the time to dry hers after her shower, but he’d declined the hairdryer when he’d returned to the bedroom with his dirty clothes underneath his arm. “Why was he watching me?”

Her mom laughed at her. “Honey, that’s a silly question. He cares about you, obviously. You never told me when you two started dating.”

“A few weeks ago.”

“Hmm, that’s fast.”

“Can you blame me?” she asked her mom. “Look at him.”

Nora Lewis looked at Bucky and said, “I don’t blame you.”

Bucky nodded at her dad and the two men looked up to find Darcy and her mother watching them. “Ready?” Darcy asked Bucky.

He nodded, giving her that warm smile that made Darcy weak. She pulled her gaze away from his gorgeousness when her dad walked over and took her elbow. “Come say goodbye to your old man,” he said.

With a brief glance over her shoulder at her mother telling Bucky all about the leftovers she’d packed in the cooler, Darcy followed her dad out the back door and around to the front of the house. “I’ll come visit soon. I promise it won’t be another five years unless there’s another… incident.”

He just smiled and shook his head at her lame attempt at a joke. “Will you promise me you’ll be careful?”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yes, dad.”

“I’m serious, sweet pea. He leads a dangerous life.”

“Dad, I’m not going on missions with him or anything. Damn.”

“I know, I know. I just worry about you.”

“What were you two talking about?” she asked.

“You,” her father said.

“Me? What about me?” She glanced over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Bucky.

Her dad put his hands on his hips. “I wanted to make sure he would take care of my little girl.”

“Oh god, dad. Really?”

“Hey, don’t act like you’re embarrassed.”

“I _am_ embarrassed.”

He waved away her comment and said, “Don’t be. He cares about you, sweet pea. I can’t say I love that my daughter is dating… well, a man older than me, but…”

“ _Dad_ , he was frozen. He’s technically in his thirties. Don’t be weird.”

“I know. He’s just a war hero from before I was born. It’s a little strange to see him kissing my daughter.”

She wanted to tell her dad that she’d never had the pleasure of kissing Bucky Barnes, but she didn’t want to ruin the show they’d put on for her parents yesterday after the movie. “I like him, dad,” she said.

“I like him, too. Just be careful.”

“I will. Stop worrying.”

“What is he worrying about now?” her mother asked as she came around the corner with Bucky. He was carrying the cooler in his left hand.

“Me. He always worries for nothing about me,” she told her mom.

“Rob, she’s a grown woman. Stop worrying about her.”

“Yeah, dad. I’m a grown woman.”

Her dad reached out and pulled her into a bear hug. “You’re still my little girl, sweet pea.”

She hugged him back, looking over his shoulder as Bucky watched them, his face inscrutable. In fact, he looked lost in thought. Darcy found herself wishing he’d reassure her with one of those smiles, but it never happened.

* * *

The drive back was quiet and she did most of the talking if there was any at all. The day had turned from sunny to overcast and colder by the time they’d finished breakfast with her parents, so the top stayed up on the car. She’d turned the radio on low to combat the almost painful silence between random things she would blather on about in an attempt to draw Bucky out of his shell.

His glove was back on, and Darcy didn’t say anything about it until they were a couple miles from the facility. Finally, she said, “Why are you still wearing the glove?”

Bucky glanced down at it. “Habit,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason,” Darcy replied, looking out the passenger window.

When they pulled onto the private road that led to the facility, he cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for inviting me, doll. I had a good time.”

She looked over at his profile while he kept his eyes on the road. “Thanks for coming.” Unable to stand it any longer, she turned in the seat and said, “Is there something wrong? Are you upset with me?”

Bucky glanced over and sighed as he turned his head back to the road. “No, it’s not you. I’ve just… got a lot on my mind.”

“Did my dad say something to you?”

“No.”

“What were you two talking about?”

Bucky shook his head.

“What? I’m not allowed to know what my dad told my fake boyfriend?” she said, trying to keep her voice light when her heart felt heavy. Just a few hours before, he’d had his body wrapped around her as they whispered to each other in the weak morning light. Now, he felt so distant.

The car hit a pothole, jostling Darcy. “He’s worried about your safety,” Bucky said after a few seconds of silence.

“Typical,” she muttered. “What’s that have to do with anything?”

“He thinks your relationship with me could put you in danger.”

She leaned her head back and groaned. “Whatever. He’s ridiculous.”

“He’s right.”

Darcy glanced over as Bucky pulled into the parking lot next to the building. “First of all, I don’t know why you’re letting this bother you since we aren’t in a relationship. And second of all, if by some crazy miracle we were, I don’t think…” She trailed off when she realized what she’d said.

“Crazy miracle?” he asked after he pulled into a spot and parked.

Was her throat closing up? Yep, it was definitely more difficult to breathe. “Diarrhea of the mouth,” she said. “What I’m trying to say is even if this were real, then maybe you’re worth a little risk.”

Closing his eyes, Bucky inhaled a deep breath before he said, “I’m not. And you shouldn’t say things like that when you don’t know the whole story.”

“What whole story?”

“Mine. All the things I’ve done,” he shot back.

She snorted. “You mean when you were being held prisoner by… by… HYDRA? Whatever, Bucky. That wasn’t you and you know it.”

“It _was_ me, but I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“Exactly. It wasn’t you.” She wanted to tell him that she’d seen his file and read every last detail about those murders, but he seemed so brittle and admitting that she’d dug into his past might shatter the tentative trust they’d been building.

He sat there for a long moment, and she could almost hear the gears turning in his head as he thought about what she’d said or maybe about what he wanted to say. She needed him to talk regardless of what came out of his mouth because the alternative was just him shutting her out.

Darcy’s heart deflated when he unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. “I’ll help you carry your bag in,” he told her.

She rushed to unbuckle herself and get out to meet him at the trunk. “I… My dad shouldn’t have said that to you. He’s just… being an overprotective father.”

He slung both their bags over his shoulder before grabbing the cooler. “I told him I’d do anything to protect you,” he said, shutting the trunk.

Whatever she was going to say crumbled away at his admission.

“I would, you know? I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

She laughed softly and gave him an uncomfortable smile. “I don’t think I need security. Just… let’s not… My dad thinks you’re dating me so he’s just saying some dumb dad shit because he’s overprotective. He told my mom that you’re a good man, so it’s not like he hates you.”

“I know,” Bucky replied.

“So, don’t be weird about it. He thinks you’re banging his little girl so he’s gonna pull out his proverbial shotgun—because he doesn’t have a real one—and tell you to watch your step or he’ll shoot you in the leg.”

“Banging?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. Sex?”

“Oh,” he replied, eyes wide.

“Yeah. Oh,” she said. “But you’re not and we were… just faking.” Darcy sighed, the admission deflating her. “So don’t get all broody with me.”

Bucky pressed his lips together, but didn’t say anything.

“And take that glove off. You’re a good guy, Bucky. People won’t care if you have a fancy vibranium arm from Wakanda or a pirate’s hook. You don’t have to hide.”

He gave her a little smile and tilted his head towards the door. “You done bossing me around, doll?”

Narrowing her eyes at him, Darcy said, “I don’t know. Are you done being stupid?”

Bucky hung his head and laughed. “Probably not,” he admitted.

“Then probably not,” she shot back before walking around the car to open the door of the building for them.

He followed her in, and they rode up to the fourth floor in the elevator because Darcy did not feel like walking up four flights of stairs while he was behind her with a view of her ass. Yeah, she’d woken up with that ass snuggled right up against his dick, but she wasn’t in the market for any more embarrassment.

Bucky stood there, his shoulder casually leaning against the wall next to her door as she unlocked it with her fingerprint. When she turned around he handed over her duffle and then tried to give her the cooler with the leftovers.

“Oh, no,” Darcy told him. “Those are for you. You’re my mom’s new favorite.”

Bucky tilted his head. “At least take the pie.”

“It’s peach. I hate peach pie. It’s for you, trust me.” She adjusted the strap of the bag hanging from her shoulder. “Did I tell you how grateful I am for this weekend?”

“You might have,” he said, smiling down at her.

“I had a really good time. Like, legitimately a good time. Thank you for hanging out with me.”

His smile widened just a bit. “It was my pleasure, doll,” Bucky murmured. He was still leaning the cap of his shoulder against the wall, his body angled toward her. She watched his eyes drop to her lips and then to the neckline of her shirt before sliding off to the side to look at the wall. If he’d been a normal guy after a good date, then she’d have assumed he wanted to kiss her but was too shy or couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. But he wasn’t a normal guy and sometimes he ran hot and cold. The intimacy this morning had clashed with his distance on the way back. And now, here he was trying to be all bashful and sweet again.

Driven by impulse, Darcy leaned forward and placed her hand on his right shoulder so she could press a kiss to his cheek. She lingered there for a moment, feeling the prickle of his beard on her chin as it contrasted with the softness of his face. “Thank you, Bucky,” she whispered before pulling back.

His lips were parted and his eyelids half-closed when she squeezed his shoulder. It was all muscle with very little give. “Anytime, sweetheart,” he whispered back, swiping his tongue over his lower lip. The way it glistened with his saliva made her want to kiss his mouth, but doing so would probably result in a very embarrassing moment at best and heartbreak at worst.

Nervously, she cleared her throat and shuffled into her little studio apartment as he pushed off the wall and took two big steps backward down the hallway. The cooler was in his left hand and his bag was thrown over his right shoulder. He held up his hand to give her a little wave goodbye.

She wanted him to come inside and sit down on the little couch with her and maybe make out. That would have been a perfect end to this very strange not-quite-a-date weekend. Sadly, she couldn’t think of an actual date that she would consider better than visiting her parents with Bucky. I need to get a life, Darcy thought, as she waved back and shut the door.


	14. Chapter 14

> _”I can be your heart to let go. ‘Cause I’ve been scared of crowded places. Come with me. I’ll take you home.” - Banks (Crowded Places)_

“Hey Dr. Banner,” she said, looking up from her phone when his massive, green form shuffled through the door, head down.

He looked up; his eyes were oddly kind in the slightly squashed face. “Bruce, please. How are you doing today, Darcy?”

She shrugged and bit the inside of her lip in an attempt to keep her face neutral. “Same shit, different day.”

He laughed and said, “I guess that’s a way to put it.”

Jane was sleeping off an all-nighter, and Darcy was trying to find ways to amuse herself. Sometimes she felt like she was getting paid to listen to Jane talk and carry her bags. She didn’t actually _do_ anything, and that was wearing on her even if she loved Jane. Actually, the way Bucky had ghosted her was bringing her down, too. She hadn’t seen or heard from him for three days. After that last night at her parents’ house and the following morning, she’d thought there was at least some sort of emotional intimacy involved. Maybe she was delusional.

Bruce opened and surveyed the contents of the cabinets in the back of the room. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked.

“Just trying to get an idea of the space we need. We officially have emergency funding from the government and anything else we need will be covered by Stark Industries. Pepper said to spare no expense in rebuilding the training facility. I’m meeting with the architect this afternoon.” Bruce sighed and leaned back against the counter. “Why am I meeting with the architect?” he asked her.

Darcy shrugged. “Dunno, dude. ‘Cause you’re the brains? What are you—the head scientist?”

He laughed at the question. “It’s nice to hear someone call me the brains to my face when I look like this.” Bruce held out his arms.

She just shrugged again and leaned back in her chair. “Best of both worlds? Brains and brawn.”

“That’s what I said!” he exclaimed, grinning.

“So, Pepper Potts is paying for the new building. I thought Congress just passed that bill to fund the Avengers.”

“They did,” he agreed. “Going forward the annual budget mostly coming from them. And they’ve allocated quite a bit toward rebuilding, but it won’t cover everything.”

Darcy scrunched up her face. “It’s a miracle they got anything passed with the government such a mess. Senators showing up and wanting their job back when their spots were filled while they were gone and shit.”

“The Constitution did not plan for this,” Bruce agreed.

“So, what kind of strings did they attach to the money? I’ve been having a crap week so I didn’t read the bill, but there have to be strings.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes at her.

“What?” Darcy asked, looking over her shoulder and then back at him. “My guess is that they fund the Avengers so they can put you under some pseudo-military branch. Kinda like SHIELD. Then if you don’t follow orders and go where you’re told, they can send you off to the, uh… What’s the nightmare of a place called? The Raft? Which is, like, totally messed up. I mean, didn’t that happen right before the… incident? Steve Rogers went all rogue and broke his buddies out.” Darcy rolled her eyes. “Like I said, same shit, different day.”

Bruce nodded, his eyes looking off into the distance behind her. “Yeah, you’re… probably exactly right.” After sweeping his gaze over the lab, his eyes landed back on her and he said, “What are you doing here?”

“Like my purpose in life? Or why am I bumming around this building being a waste of space? Or what am I doing right now, this moment?”

“You work for Dr. Foster, right?”

“Right.”

“Part-time? Full-time?”

She gave a sharp laugh. “Whatever time. I have no life, dude.”

“What are you doing right now?” he asked, watching her with no small amount of intensity.

Darcy widened her eyes. “Uhhh, being bored and waiting for Jane to tell me what to do.”

“How do you feel about a second job?” he asked.

“What kind of job?” Darcy leaned forward in her chair.

“Meet the architect with me this afternoon and coordinate what we need to get the labs built and moved. We have people working out of here and out of Stark Tower in the City. They all need to be moved to the new facility once it is up and running.”

Darcy looked around the room before returning her gaze to Bruce’s very earnest face. “Wait. Me? You want me to do all that?”

“Of course. I can’t do it on my own and no one else is in charge. Like the government, we’re a little bit of a mess.”

“Who’s going to listen to me? I’m nobody.”

Bruce shrugged, his big shoulders bunching up around his ears. “I’ll tell them you work for me. I’ll even pay you. Double what Dr. Foster is paying you.”

“What about Eyepatch?”

He furrowed his brows. “Fury?”

She nodded.

“Look, he and I are in over our heads. He’ll have no problem with it. Just don’t call him Eyepatch.”

Darcy opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Was this for real? Was he actually handing over the responsibility of managing the construction and transfer of the science-y division of the Avengers? To her?

“Please say yes,” he said, stepping up to stand in front of her desk. “Pretty please?”

“Can I still work with Jane? I don’t want to leave her.”

“Sure, as long as she can share and you’re okay with long hours.”

She smiled up at him. “Okay, okay. But only because you said pretty please. I just want you to know that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Me neither. I do not have a degree or experience in project management.”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “Don’t act humble. You have a gazillion doctorates.”

Bruce gave a short laugh before tilting his head and saying, “Hey, did you ever get an answer to your question?”

“What question?”

“About Bucky.”

Her smile was probably more bitter than sweet. “Yeah, I did.”

“And?”

Darcy shook her head. “And what? It’s wild. I feel stupid for not knowing.”

“I heard you two took a road trip together.”

“Not exactly a road trip. He pretended to be my boyfriend last weekend to get my mother off my back.”

Bruce took a step back and nodded, looking as if he were deep in thought. “Hmm. That’s interesting.”

“Is it?”

“How do you feel about it?”

“What? The fake dating or his past?”

“Both?” Bruce asked, raising his brows.

“I… guess I’m pretty good with both,” she answered. If only Bucky weren’t avoiding her. “Is he out on a mission? Haven’t seen him around for a couple of days.”

“I don’t think so,” Bruce replied.

The answer made her heart drop, made her feel like a stupid, silly girl who was catching feelings for the coolest guy in school. The guy who was never going to look at her as more than a cute sidekick. She’d been surviving on telling herself that he’d been called away. “Oh. Okay,” she murmured. After taking a couple seconds to collect her dignity, she looked up at Bruce. “Let’s go move these labs, big guy.” Cringing as she stood, Darcy said, “Sorry—again—for the terrible nickname.”

He laughed. “No, it’s okay. Meeting is in an hour and I need to take a look at the other two labs. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Jane didn’t seem to care that her assistant had spent most of the afternoon meeting an architect with Bruce Banner, but maybe that was because Darcy was back in the lab by the time Jane arrived. It was also probably because Darcy had brought a massive cup of dark roast coffee with a fancy chocolate bar that had set her back five bucks. Jane was easy to bribe and win over with sweets.

Nick Fury had given her a glare with his one eye, shrewdly assessing her competence before looking at Bruce and saying, “Fine. She answers to you. Get her credentials and tell the contractor.”

It had been that easy. Darcy celebrated by herself on the back patio with a can of Cherry Coke and a Twix candy bar. She had just pulled the wrapper open, her mind on Bucky and why he suddenly didn’t want to see her when she heard the door open. Darcy looked up and saw the very man that had been occupying her thoughts. Her stomach dropped and her heartbeat sped up. Stupid, stupid girl, she thought dropping her eyes to the concrete table.

“Hey,” he said softly after walking over and coming to a stop in front of her.

“Hey,” Darcy said, wiping the condensation off the can of Coke.

“I shared your mom’s leftovers with Sam. He says he’s coming next time.”

Darcy felt bitter and disappointed and it made her vicious. “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “The person who draws the short straw has to play my boyfriend for the weekend?” She looked up at him after she asked the question and immediately regretted the bratty tone she’d taken.

Bucky looked more than a little surprised at the way she’d snapped. “No, that’s my job. But I told him I’d bring leftovers back again,” he finally said. Darcy swallowed the regret and hurt that was trying to climb up her throat and out her mouth, instead watching him take a seat across from her. “I think I need to apologize,” he murmured.

She looked at his hands resting on the table—the flesh one was strong and capable and the vibranium one had those thin strips of what looked like burnished gold at the joints. “You’re not wearing your glove,” she said.

He gave her a smile. “You told me I should stop wearing it. I thought I’d take your advice.”

“Hmm,” she said, drawing lines in the condensation of her Coke can so she didn’t have to look at him and how beautiful he was.

“Would you… would you get dinner with me?” he asked.

Darcy glanced up at his face. His expression was expectant and open. “I thought you were avoiding me,” she told him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, doll. I’m sorry. I didn’t… I never meant to make you feel that way. I just… I just needed some time.”

She tore an edge off the Twix wrapper that still held the two bars. He wasn’t a normal guy and it wasn’t fair for her to treat him like one. He’d been through hell and had his free will stripped for decades before he’d been forced into hiding. Life hadn’t been good to Bucky Barnes, and she couldn’t expect him to react like a normal guy. “You’re right,” she said, looking up to meet his gaze. Those blue eyes just pulled her right in. “I’m sorry I was being shitty just now.”

“No apologies from you, doll.”

She smiled at him and held one of the Twix bars out as a peace offering. “Want to ruin your dinner by eating candy first?”

“Only if you’re having dinner with me,” he said.

“Where are you taking me to dinner?” she asked when he accepted the Twix.

“I think we agreed I’d share my ice cream at the Thai place next time. I have our car if you’ll forgive me for disappearing these past few days.”

“How can I say no to that?” she asked him.

Bucky pointed his Twix at her and said, “I’m hoping you can’t,” before he bit into it.

“I have this condition that makes it difficult for me to say no to you, so I guess we’re going to dinner,” she replied before biting into her candy.

 

* * *

 

True to his word, he did manage to get the car they’d taken to her parents’ house. She sat in the passenger seat and watched him shift gears and navigate to the restaurant that was less than ten miles away. He faded in and out of being present. One moment he was engaged with her, smiling and asking her out to dinner. The next moment he was focused on the road, not daring to look at or speak to her. It irritated Darcy enough that she wanted to call him out on it. Before she put those words in order to ask him what his problem was, she remembered who she was dealing with. It was easy to forget what he’d been through when he was there in front of her, looking like her dream guy.

“Earth to Bucky,” she said.

He glanced over at her. His expression looked like it was almost contorted in pain, but it melted into a soft smile and eyes that exuded warmth.

“You okay?” she said.

He nodded and shifted his eyes back to the road.

“Sometimes you go away, and I think you don’t want to be here or maybe you’re doing something you don’t want to do.”

“I’m exactly where I want to be,” he assured her. “Just… I have a lot on my mind.”

“You may not think it, but I’m a good listener,” Darcy said.

“Oh, I know you are. What I have to say isn’t… it isn’t easy to say.”

Her stomach churned with what he could possibly have to say to her that was causing that much anxiety and pain. He was a good man, kind and caring. Maybe he was trying to figure out a way to let her down easy, a way to make it clear he wanted to be friends and not more. Her big mouth always made jokes about them dating or how attractive he was. What if he was just looking for a friend to confide in and was worried she was assuming it was something it wasn’t?

“Just say it,” she told him. “I’m a big girl. I’m not gonna be upset.”

He shifted his gaze to her momentarily before looking away. “It isn’t about you, doll.” The car rocked from side to side as he pulled into the parking lot and turned into one of the spots. She watched him pull that glove out of his pocket. “This isn’t for you. I don’t want the people in there to see my hand,” he told her.

“Okay, I get it. But you know you don’t ever have to wear it for me.”

“I know. But did _you_ know you’re too nice to me?” Bucky asked, a melancholy smile curling the corners of his mouth up just the slightest bit.

“Bullshit. But I’ll let you pay for dinner if it makes you feel better.”

He laughed as he put on the glove. Darcy watched as he opened the door and got out of the car. He was walking around the back when she levered herself out of the passenger seat. “You’re not being very cooperative,” he told her, hands on his hips as he came to a stop a few feet from where she stood next to the open door.

Darcy raised her brows. “What do you mean?”

“I asked you to dinner. I was coming to open your door like a gentleman.”

She chuckled nervously, her thoughts scattered in her mind. What did that mean? “What? Like a date?” she asked.

He sighed and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Come on,” Bucky told her, offering her his right arm. “I promised you dessert, too.”

She wanted an answer to her question, but it didn’t seem like she was going to get one. Pushing him didn’t feel right, at least not now. However, when she stepped forward, she hooked her right arm in his left instead of accepting his flesh and blood one. His entire body tensed for just a moment before he seemed to make a conscious effort to relax. “Is being in public giving you anxiety?” she asked.

“No, not with you here.”

“What do I do?”

“You make it easy,” Bucky said, leading them over to the door. He was in a heather gray T-shirt that looked like it was thin enough to give her a glimpse of his abs and that black leather jacket with jeans that fit him perfectly. Remembering the way he’d pulled the shirt off that night in her bedroom made Darcy want to reach over and place her hand on his chest. They’d been so close, his body against hers in that bed, but she hadn’t touched him with her hands.

She chuckled as he opened the door. “How do I make anything easy? I feel like I’m a mess.”

“You make everything easier.”

“How?” Darcy asked, giving a quizzical look. Reluctantly, she released her hold on his arm and entered the restaurant.

“You distract me. You help me feel like I’m not sticking out like a sore thumb when I’m in public.” The hostess looked up expectantly and Bucky shifted his attention to the woman, saying, “Two, please. A corner table if you have one.”

The hostess smiled warmly and grabbed two menus before asking them to follow her. Darcy took Bucky’s cybernetic arm again. It didn’t feel as strange as she’d thought with the leather jacket covering it. The arm definitely moved like a real one. “You’re too hot to _not_ stick out like a sore thumb,” she whispered in his ear as they followed the woman to the table.

Bucky chuckled and shook his head.

“I’m just here to boost your ego. Is it working?” she teased.

Bucky dipped his head down and let his lips brush over her hair. “You get me out of my head. I appreciate it,” he whispered.

The hostess left them at their table and Darcy laughed awkwardly as Bucky pushed her chair in. It was so old-fashioned and sweet, something no guy she’d ever gone out with had done. “You better stop or I’ll actually think this is a real date,” Darcy told him as she settled in her seat and watched him sit down in his across the small table. “I didn’t wear date clothes,” she added. They’d left right after she finished her Coke. Darcy was in a pair of black athletic leggings with mesh cutouts down the sides from mid-thigh to her ankle. Her T-shirt was oversized and tended to slip off one shoulder, but was blessedly long enough to cover her ass.

“You look perfect,” he told her, sounding so sincere she almost melted all over her chair.

Laughing nervously again, she waved away the compliment. “You’re gonna get me all flustered,” Darcy said. The butterflies in her stomach meant she had no appetite, but she opened the menu anyway. “Wanna share again?”

“Yes,” he told her. She glanced at him over her menu, but he hadn’t even picked up his up. He was still watching her, looking like a fucking dream with the hair and the just-scruffy-enough beard. It was one of those moments when he was very present, very much focused on her instead of inside his head, and it flustered her to have the weight of his attention lasered in on her. She wasn’t the kind of women that inspired that kind of focus, especially from guys like _him_.

She licked her lips and dropped her gaze to the menu. “What looks good?” He really ran hot and cold sometimes. It was intense intimacy and then it was nothing. When she was the center of his attention, Darcy felt like she was on fire and the luckiest woman in the world. When he disappeared, she questioned every feeling she’d had while he’d been with her. She was sure she was making something more out of him reaching out for some sort of friendship, but it was hard to ignore the way he looked at her during times like this.

“You pick,” Bucky told her.

They ordered glasses of water and iced tea from the waiter. Darcy decided on two entrees and asked for a couple of extra plates. Bucky watched her with a faint smile on his face the entire time. What was he thinking? She desperately wanted to know why they were there after he’d been avoiding her for days. Maybe he’d been embarrassed by the physical affection that last night or the way they’d woken up all tangled together underneath the same sheet in her bed. Maybe he didn’t want her getting ideas like him wanting more than just a little touching. Darcy definitely wanted more, but that seemed unlikely, even when he was so intent on her.

“So, I think I got a new job,” she told him, folding her hands on the table and leaning forward.

For a fleeting moment, there was disappointment and panic on his face, but he covered it quickly by dropping his gaze and collecting himself. “Yeah? What’s the job? When will you be leaving?” Was that what the flash of emotion was about? He was afraid she wasn’t going to be around? She was such a loser, she’d stick around just for Bucky if he asked.

“Oh, I’m not leaving. I guess I should say it’s _another_ job. I didn’t quit Jane or anything. Bruce asked me to coordinate the labs for him.”

“Yeah?” he asked, mirroring her posture, hands folded on the table and leaning forward. Their foreheads were just a few inches apart.

“Yeah. I was a little surprised he’s just, like, handing it over to me. We met with the architect today. Fury’s giving me credentials and everything. I’m… well, I guess I’m the project manager or something.”

“You’re working that job and the one with Jane?”

She took a drink of water and said, “So, I talked to Jane about it just before I saw you. I’m going to train someone new for her—a part-timer or someone she could share with Bruce.”

He nodded slowly. “She’s okay with that?”

“Surprisingly, yes. She… she was just worried we weren’t going to be friends.” Laughing softly, Darcy shook her head. “A month ago, I wanted to kill her or quit or both. But… now I can’t imagine her not being in my life. She and I… we’ve been through so much together. So much.” Sighing, she added, “I think this will be good. We’ll be friends. Just friends. I need all the friends I can get. I’ve lost a lot of them in the past few years. New job, new me, right?”

Bucky gave her the biggest, most sincere smile she’d ever seen. She felt the warmth of it all the way down to her feet. “That’s great, doll. I’m not surprised he asked you. You’re perfect for the job.”

She scrunched her face up and said, “Why do you think that?”

“You’re smart. You get things done. And you care.”

“Qualities of a project manager overseeing part of a multi-million dollar project?” she asked with a laugh.

“You’ll learn fast. He couldn’t have picked someone better. I’m glad you’re not leaving.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“You wanna tell me why you spent days avoiding me, then?”

He gave her a tight smile. “I had a lot on my mind. Still do, actually. But I missed you, so I’m glad you forgave me and agreed to dinner.”

“Who says I forgave you?” she teased.

“Don’t break my heart, doll,” he teased back, giving her a wink.

She wanted to tell him the same damn thing. Darcy wasn’t sure what kind of tightrope they were walking or what he wanted out of her, but sometimes she felt like she was getting in too deep and would end up getting hurt when this turned out to be nothing. Best case scenario, he was looking for a fling, a little something to get back into the groove of life after being in hiding. Maybe he thought she’d be easy and agreeable. It was true, and she’d probably go along with whatever he wanted, which made Darcy feel a little disappointed in herself.

“I’m not capable of breaking your heart,” she told him. Either way he wanted to take the response would work. She wasn’t important or special enough to actually get his heart. And if she could ever be so lucky, then she sure as hell wouldn’t be breaking it. He deserved better than that.

“Tell me about this job,” Bucky said, changing the subject. As much as she wanted to know how he really felt about her, it was probably for the best that she didn’t. At least she had a little glimmer of hope in the back of her mind to hang onto in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only three more chapters! Who's ready for that kiss?


	15. Chapter 15

> _”Cold nights and Sunday mornings, on your way out of the grey. I’ve got time, I’ve got love. Got confidence you’ll rise above.” - George Ezra (Hold My Girl)_

It was obvious she liked him, and that was what was breaking Bucky’s heart. The thought of her seeing him differently when she eventually found out the extent of his past cut deep. She was a good person who wanted to see the best in people, including him. Her father hadn’t known all the details—all the assassinations, kidnappings, torture, executions, murders—but the knowledge that they were lurking there in Bucky’s past made him concerned for his daughter’s safety.

He hadn’t told Bucky to stay away from his little girl, but he had appealed to Bucky’s honor when he questioned what was best for a young woman who obviously didn’t know what she was getting into when she’d started talking to Bucky. Rob Lewis was right; Darcy hadn’t known that he was feeling lost and was desperate for some kind of connection, something to hold onto. She didn’t ask to be that thing and carry that weight. It was too much to expect of her, especially when she didn’t know the details of his past.

“There’s a difference between knowing I was a brainwashed assassin for HYDRA for decades and knowing each person I killed,” he’d told Sam on that landing pad a week ago when the other man had encouraged him to go talk to Darcy. Bucky knew what he should do and what was right, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to tell her everything. He also couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone. Doing so had hurt her feelings. Watching her eyes light up while she sat across from him, eating her ice cream and telling him about the plan for the new facility, made Bucky feel so happy he almost couldn’t bear it. Losing this would hurt. Maybe he could persuade her to give him another chance after she found out.

“You seem happy with the new job,” he said, licking ice cream off the back of his spoon.

Darcy’s eyes dropped to his mouth as her lips parted. He wanted to act on it, wanted to lean across the table and kiss her, maybe taste the sugary sweetness of the ice cream she was eating as well. He didn’t think she’d stop him; she was open about her attraction to him. Unlike some other women in recent years—even when he was with HYDRA—her attraction came with no strings or pressure. It was there, a fact of life, but she had no expectations. She didn’t think anything would happen between them, which made Bucky want to kiss her even more.

“I am,” she said. “It’ll be a steep learning curve, though.”

“You’ll do fine.”

Darcy shrugged and took another bite of ice cream. “Here’s hoping. I’ve gotta find someone to help Jane, though. And train them.”

“And she’s really okay with that?” Bucky asked.

“I think so. I mean, she wants me to be happy. Honestly, I think I’m more worried about finding someone for her than she is.”

“She doesn’t care?”

“Well, I think she cares. I mean, I know she cares about her work and about me. I promised her I’d always be there for her and I guess that’s enough for her--my promise, that is. I… Well, sometimes I think people care, but not as much as I do.” Darcy laughed softly under her breath, gaze focused on her nearly empty bowl of ice cream. “I’m used to that, though.”

“Used to what?”

“Caring more than other people.”

Couldn’t he just kiss her? Just a brush of lips so he could feel her soft exhale and taste her breath. Just for a moment. She was too good for him or any of this, though. And, in a strange way, she reminded him of Steve. The hole Steve’s absence had left in his life was palpable and would likely always be there. Darcy wasn’t any kind of replacement for his longtime friend, but she had Steve’s heart and that made Bucky want to keep her in his life. People like that were rare. “You remind me of Steve,” he admitted.

“Steve?” Darcy looked up and smiled. “Steve Rogers?” Now she was rolling her eyes at the thought.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m, like, the furthest thing from Captain America that you can get.”

Bucky pushed his bowl toward the middle of the table and leaned closer, his elbows resting on the edge and the left hand extended toward her, palm up. He’d stopped himself from taking her hand at the last minute, and now his was lying there awkwardly between them. “You’re actually the only person I’ve met who reminds me of him.”

She blinked and dropped her gaze, shaking her head. “That’s ridiculous, dude. I’m not brave or cool or any of that.”

“You are, but that’s not why I think you’re like Steve. It’s because you’re generous and accepting and you’d do anything for the people in your life. Like you said, you care more than they do.”

She wouldn’t look at him and her breathing was shallow. For a moment, Bucky wondered if he’d hurt her by saying those things. A lock of her hair fell over her shoulder and dangled next to her cheek. He had to clench his right hand into a fist to keep from reaching out and tucking it behind her ear. With his attention so focused on that, he didn’t notice her slide a hand closer to his. A faint, barely-there touch lit up the center of his left palm, the receptors in the prosthetic sending the sensory input to his nervous system. He looked down and saw the tip of her middle finger drawing a lazy circle right in the center of his palm. The material of the glove dulled the sensation, and he wished he could take it off and experience her naked touch again.

“I try to hide how much I care,” she told him. “It’s a total fucking bummer that you’re so perceptive.”

Bucky watched her trace patterns in the cup of his palm. When she let her fingertip move up his ring finger, he flattened the back of his hand on the table so she could continue. “You want to hide from me?” he asked her.

“It’s a little uncomfortable when someone can see through me like you do,” she whispered, laying her palm against his. The tips of her fingers went up the sleeve of the leather jacket. He inhaled sharply when she wiggled them a little further up until she could feel the arm instead of the glove around his wrist.

“Even if I like what I see?” he whispered back.

That finally got her to look up and meet his gaze. Her gorgeous blue eyes were surprised. The vulnerability there almost closed his throat up. He wasn’t prepared to find out this funny, sweet, vivacious woman ever doubted herself, that all those remarks putting herself down weren’t just for laughs.

“Don’t act surprised,” he told her softly. “I like being around you; you know that.” He wanted to say more, but he didn’t know how to begin to tell her what she’d become to him over such a short time. A few weeks were nothing against the decades he’d lived.

“Can I get you anything else?”

They both jumped and Darcy jerked her hand back when the waiter appeared with their check in hand. “No,” Bucky told him, taking the check and digging his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said, watching him lay down cash to cover their meals and a tip.

Bucky wished he could give her more than just dinner. He wanted to kiss her, to wake up with her in his bed like he had that morning a few days ago. The heat and softness of her body melded so closely—so perfectly—with his. He used to have nightmares every night. While in Bucharest, they’d started happening less frequently, but when he came out of cryo in Wakanda, he had to conquer them all over again.

The peace and the reprieve Wakanda and its people had offered him did wonders for his mental health, and by the time Thanos came, the nightmares were infrequent. The two battles with Thanos and his army dredged them up again. Even if he didn’t wake with a start, covered in sweat, he clenched his teeth at night to the point that his jaw hurt almost every morning. Not _that_ morning, though. He’d woken up all hazy and dreamy and comfortable with her tucked against his body and his arm holding her close.

“Anytime, doll. Thanks for cutting me some slack and agreeing to come,” Bucky told her, standing and offering her his arm. This time she took his right one. Bucky closed his eyes as he concentrated on the press of her breast when she stepped in close to get through the maze of tables between them and the door.

“You deserve a little slack, I guess,” she told him as they reached the exit. The window in the door allowed him to see the torrential downpour outside. “Uh oh,” Darcy said, voicing his thoughts.

“I’ll go get the car and pull up to the door,” he said just as a clap of thunder startled them.

She leaned against him as she looked out the window. “It’s not so bad.”

“Darcy, you can barely see anything for the rain.”

“Let’s make a run for it,” she told him. “Get the keys out and unlock the car.”

Bucky smiled down at her. “You wanna make a run for it?”

“Yeah, it’s just water. I’m not gonna melt.”

“I can pull the car up to the door.”

She snorted. “What’s the fun in that? Thunderstorms were my favorite as a kid. Unlock the car and I’ll race you.”

Pulling the keys out as she’d ordered, he said, “You’re crazy, doll.”

“Just a little.”

“And you’re just like Steve. There’s no denying it. Should have known from the beginning why I liked you so much.”

Her cheeks were tinged pink and she looked like the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “Shh, don’t compliment me. You’ll get me all flustered. Unlock the car.”

Bucky hit the unlock button and the lights flashed on their car halfway across the parking lot. “Whatever you say, doll.”

She let go of his arm and clasped his right hand in hers. She’d said she wanted to race, but he’d much rather do it this way if that meant he could hold her hand. “Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” Bucky told her.

She used her free hand to jerk open the door and take off across the parking lot, pulling him behind her. The rain was coming down in sheets and by the time they splashed across the asphalt, they were soaked. She squealed as she let go of his hand and raced around the car. They pulled their doors open at the same time and dropped into the bucket seats.

Darcy’s chest was rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath. It took him too long to tear his gaze away from the way her thin T-shirt was plastered to her bra, letting him see the purple material with white polka dots. What if he took her home and undressed her and figured out how to touch like _that_ again? He could almost imagine laying her slightly wet body in his bed after he’d stripped off her clothes. Would she let him kiss her anywhere he wanted?

Closing his eyes, he tried to gather his thoughts before looking over at her face. “I’m soaked,” she said, gathering her wet hair in a knot at the base of her skull.

He was, too, but all he could think about right now was her and how badly he wished he could stay the night with her. Instead of saying that, he just said, “Me too,” and started the car.

She was quiet on the drive back to the building, seemingly content to lay her head on the headrest and close her eyes. The amount of trust she had in him was astounding. She made him want to be a better person.

It was still raining hard when they got back to the building and pulled into the parking lot by the side door. “I’ll go open the door for you and you can run in,” Bucky offered.

Darcy rolled her eyes at him, opened her door, and pushed herself out of the car. He watched her hold out her arms and twirl in a circle, face to the sky.

Laughing, Bucky got out and closed his door. “What are you doing?”

“Enjoying the rain!” she yelled. “We’re already soaked. Might as well enjoy it right? I haven’t done this in forever.”

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. The cloudy sky was getting darker as eight o’clock approached. Bucky wiped the rain from his eyelashes and watched her jump into a puddle of water that slashed over her shoes. That shirt she was wearing was molded to her body now, showing him the shape of her figure since she was wearing pants that fit her like a second skin. Her ample chest narrowed to her waist and then her hips flared out before tapering into legs. Her ass looked like it would be a handful. Bucky curled the fingers of his hands into the palms as he thought about the way his dick had felt nestled right up against that ass a few mornings ago. What he wouldn’t give to wake up like that again.

He started toward the door, but she was still playing in the parking lot, spinning in circles and lifting her face upward to the sky. “Doll, come on,” he said. The bolt of lightning in the distance and the following clap of thunder propelled him toward her. “Didn’t your ma ever tell you not to play outside in a thunderstorm?”

Darcy stepped to the side when he reached for her. She laughed and said, “Yeah, but I did it anyway.”

“Just like Steve,” he said under his breath. Bucky couldn’t find much energy to be upset with her, though. She was so alive and he wanted to be close to that. He reached for her again and she twirled away.

“Will your arm rust?” she asked with a grin, hair plastered to the side of her face.

He laughed at her question. “No. Get over here,” Bucky said, reaching out for her again. She evaded him a third time. “I’m gonna pick you up and carry you inside if you don’t get over here.”

Walking backward away from him, she said, “Ooh, so scary.”

Bucky growled and lunged for her. This time he meant business and she was much too slow for his reflexes. He caught her around the waist and threw her over his right shoulder. The sharp exhale and grunt as the air left her body almost made him stop and put her back on her feet, but when he heard her breathless giggling as she kicked her feet up in the air he knew she was just fine. Maybe a little uncomfortable, but she wasn’t screaming bloody murder.

He placed his left hand on her ass so he could adjust her in the fireman’s carry and walk over to the door. These clothes she was wearing were thin and soaked and left very little to the imagination. Maybe he could carry her all the way up to his room on five, unlock the door, toss her on his bed, strip off every single piece of her clothing and… And… And what? Did he even know how to do that anymore? She seemed like she’d be happy to teach him. In fact, Bucky couldn’t think of a woman he’d trust more than her to help him relearn that kind of pleasure. Maybe that was why he’d not indulged in these thoughts since escaping HYDRA. It was because he hadn’t met _her_ yet.

Bucky used his fingerprint to open the door and carried her over the threshold before reluctantly bending his knees and carefully setting her down on her feet. There was a puddle of water forming around them on the tile floor. Her shirt was lifted just a bit, revealing the curve of her back and side. Her hair was dripping wet, and he knew he probably looked the same. Was his smile as big as hers? When he realized it was, he felt the smile dissipate under the acknowledgment and awareness.

“Wasn’t that fun?” she asked, wringing her hair out over the mat by the door.

“Something like that,” Bucky told her, trying not to look at her hitched up shirt and the skin it exposed.

Darcy noticed the direction of his gaze and pulled the soaked material down to hide herself, a blush coloring the apples of her cheeks. Why was she embarrassed? She was gorgeous. He could stand there and watch her for hours as she slowly dried off.

“Come on,” he told her. “I’ll walk you up to your room.”

“Like a motherfucking gentleman,” she said with a wink.

“Like a motherfucking gentleman,” Bucky agreed, unable to stop the smile. He offered his right arm and she took it. Good, he thought. He’d prefer feeling her body pressed against his actual arm instead of the prosthetic. Anything was better than nothing, but there was something to be said for the softness of her breast yielding to the curve of his arm.

They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Darcy spent the brief ride telling him how she hoped he’d stop ignoring her and how much she enjoyed having dinner with him. Not that she enjoyed dinner, but that she enjoyed dinner _with him_.

Her door was two down from the elevator. He stood there beside it, his left shoulder planted against the wall, while she unlocked it with her fingerprint. She remained there in the doorway and looked at him like he was important, like he meant something to her. Like he could invite himself into her room and she’d happily step aside to let him in.

“Thanks for this evening, Bucky,” she said. “This day started out pretty shitty, but it got better and better.”

“Well, you did get a new job,” he agreed.

“And I got to have dinner with you and play in the rain and… thanks.” She was so earnest and sincere that his heart ached. He longed to reach out and touch her face, pull her closer. He remembered lying there with his head in her lap as she played with his hair. These tender feelings for her that went beyond just undressing her and pressing their bodies together were overwhelming.

“It was my pleasure, doll.”

“Shh, don’t call me doll. I told you it makes this feel like a date when you’re being so nice and walking me to my door when you look like… _all that_.”

He looked down his body. His clothes were almost as wet as hers. The leather jacket was the only saving grace. “All that?”

“Like a meal.”

Bucky grinned. “A meal?”

“Yeah, I’d call you a snack, but you’re definitely a meal.”

He chuckled. “Have mercy on me. I don’t know this slang. I’ve been on a farm for the past two years and before that... A meal is better than snack?”

“Definitely.”

Bucky shook his head at her, but he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. “Doll, sometimes I don’t understand half of what you say, but I still enjoy listening to it.”

“There you go making me feel like I’m on a date. Where’s my goodnight kiss?” She was teasing him; he knew that. But he wanted nothing more than to give her exactly what she was asking for.

“Yeah? You want a goodnight kiss?” he asked, looking up at her through his lashes.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. After a moment, she dropped her gaze and gave him a disbelieving, breathy little laugh. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

“You asked,” Bucky told her.

“And you were gonna call my bluff?”

“Were you calling mine?” he shot back, pressing her. What if she did? What if she told him yes? The thought sent a surge of desire through his body, making him weak in the knees and absolutely terrified.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m calling yours. Where’s my kiss?” She looked at him like she didn’t believe he’d do it, all that sassy, take-no-shit attitude on display. It made Bucky want to turn her world upside down.

He took a step forward after he pushed himself off the wall. Darcy held her ground, but that was probably because she didn’t have anywhere to go. She was straddling the threshold to her room with the doorframe behind her. “You sure?” he asked.

“Are you?” she said, licking those full, pink lips. He stared at them for a moment before taking another step, bringing him toe-to-toe with her.

“I keep thinking about that night with the wine in the window. And the morning after.” His voice was barely a whisper, the words hushed while his lips barely moved enough to form them. Bucky’s heart was racing as he looked into her upturned face. There was a drop of water on the tip of her nose.

“Me, too,” she admitted. “I can’t _stop_ thinking about it.”

He wanted to ask her why it was on her mind. He wasn’t that important. He’d done bad things. Why him? Instead, he leaned forward and brushed the tip of his nose over hers. Her breath hitched, maybe because she’d been expecting a kiss. “You had a drop of water on your nose,” Bucky whispered, lightly pressing his forehead to hers.

His comment made her laugh softly which, in turn, made him smile. “So, you were bluffing after all,” Darcy told him. “Stop teasing me with promises of goodnight kisses.”

“Oh, I wasn’t bluffing,” he murmured, tilting his head and letting his mouth hover over hers, their noses side-by-side. Bucky could feel the puffs of warm air escaping her parted lips. He felt like he was walking on a high wire and moving would tip his balance, would make him fall.

She made the decision for him. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, she was the one to take the step for them both. She saw him out there, frozen and terrified to fall so she reached up and pulled him down. Or rather, her little hand reached up and curled around the back of his neck, sliding underneath his wet hair and applied just the slightest pressure. Just enough, not too much. “I wasn’t bluffing either,” she whispered. The movement of her lips brushed them against his and set him on fire.

Before Bucky could consciously think about what he was doing and the implications, he’d crushed his mouth against her. Unlike Darcy’s gentle prodding, he’d dived in too fast. She made a muffled sound of surprise and squeezed the back of his neck. Too much, he thought. He’d gone too far. The kiss was awkward and fumbling. He was ill-equipped to finesse this situation with more than words. It had been too long and he was too eager now that he’d found someone who ignited that particular spark in his gut.

He pulled away and turned his head to the side, eyes unseeing. Bucky had expected her to let go of his neck after the way he’d attacked her and pushed her back up against the doorframe like an animal. For some strange reason, she hadn’t. His right hand was on her hip, halfway curved around her back. He wanted to tighten his grip and pull her lower body into his, but he was just too eager, to awkward. This didn’t feel like riding a bike after years of not having one. It felt like having to learn all over again.

Her free hand slipped over his shoulder and the hand at the back of his neck squeezed again, more insistently this time. “Hey,” she whispered.

Bucky summoned up what courage he could find and turned his head so he could look at her again. He wanted to ask why she hadn’t let him go, why she was still holding him there in that spot. Did she know as long as her hands were on him, he couldn’t move?

“You stopped before it got good,” she said, that generous smile on her mouth.

Bucky exhaled a shuddering breath that was almost a laugh just before Darcy went up on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth over his. He remained still as she did it again, but this time she applied pressure. His eyelids fluttered closed and he bent his head down so she didn’t have to strain, but still didn’t dare actively participate in something he’d fucked up just moments before. Darcy parted her lips and kissed him again, drawing his lower lip between hers. He couldn’t ignore this and stand there stoically. It was just too much to ask. Instead, Bucky followed her lead and tried to make his mouth soft and pliant for her, pushing his lips out so he could capture her upper one.

Her little moan of approval lit him up again, but he tried to control the desire pumping through his blood as he gently kissed her back. Darcy swiped her hot tongue over his lower lip, and he readily opened his mouth for her, tentatively touching her tongue with his. She took control again, sliding further into his mouth, letting their tongues intertwine. He moved his hand to the small of her back so he could pull her closer. In the recesses of his mind, Bucky acknowledged that she was gripping his shoulder and neck tightly. The pressure only served to turn him on faster, push him higher. His cock was half hard and pressed between their bodies, nestled against her abdomen. She didn’t seem to mind, which made him feel dizzy with lust.

She pulled back to suck in a breath of air. Bucky only gave her a moment before he moved in for another kiss. This time he had a better idea of what he was doing. It _was_ like riding a bike after all, he thought as she groaned her approval and kissed him back, tongue and lips and even teeth nipping at the fullness of his bottom lip. The pressure made him growl and nip back, but only playfully. He soothed the area where his teeth had been with the tip of his tongue.

Darcy gasped into his mouth when he slid both of his hands down to grab her ass, lifting her up in the doorway. Yeah, he thought, I remember how this goes. Her legs wrapped around his waist. It had never felt this good and this urgent before. It was her, not him. He could only feel this way for her. Her black pants were thin and stretchy and there was so little between them when Bucky pressed his cock into the cradle between her legs. He could rip her pants and unzip his and…

“Fuck,” he whispered, pulling in a ragged breath of air between kisses.

She did the same before tilting her head back and leaning the crown of it against the doorframe at her back. Her chest was rising and falling, the v-neck of the wet T-shirt pulled down and stretched tightly over her chest to reveal an indecent amount of cleavage with just the edge of that purple polka dot bra. It wasn’t even a conscious thought to kiss the swell of her breasts; it was more instinct.

Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly want her more, she tilted her hips like she wanted to get closer—like she was trying to grind against him for friction—and gasped his name. What would she sound like when she came apart? He wanted to lay her down on a bed and find out how she’d say his name then. Could he make her feel good? She’d show him how and make it feel like he was in charge. It was something she’d been doing from day one.

Bucky moved up, placing open-mouth kisses over her chest, her collarbone, along the side of her neck until he reached her ear. Darcy’s breathing was labored and she was flexing the muscles in her thighs and stomach like she wanted something a little more than lingering kisses on her flawless skin. He squeezed her ass in both his hands, enjoying the fullness, and thrust up against her center as he took her earlobe between his lips.

“Fuck, Bucky,” she gasped. “You’re gonna make me come.”

That surge of satisfaction and pride was unfamiliar. It was something he hadn’t felt in so fucking long. He couldn’t even remember the last time. And they were here because of her. He was rediscovering this only with her because there couldn’t be anyone else. Only her. Bucky shifted his right hand, bringing it closer to where her ass curved down and in toward that spot between her legs. The heat there was incredible. He remembered that morning when he fantasized about sliding those little shorts off her body and slipping himself up inside while they spooned in her bed. He hadn’t thought he’d find himself anywhere near to carrying out that fantasy until now.

The new position of his hand spurred her on, made her wiggle in his grip. Bucky pressed a sloppy kiss over her ear before saying, “Come for me. I wanna hear you, doll.”

“Bucky…” The way she moaned his name was almost obscene.

She looked down at him, one hand on his shoulder and one wrapped in his hair. He lifted his chin so they could kiss again. As soon as her lips brushed over his, the stairwell door at the end of the hall shut. They both gasped, but while Darcy tightened her grip on him, Bucky released his hold on her. He sat her on her feet and took a step back, his shoulder smacking into the doorframe on the opposite side. There were footsteps and a low conversation between two men.

Bucky’s initial reaction was frustration. He wanted to scream at them for the interruption. That quickly slid into shame and embarrassment for the way he’d nearly taken advantage of her giving nature. He was still hiding the full truth of his past from her while he was seconds from fucking her in the doorway to her room.

“Darcy,” he said, his voice a rough croak. She’d since released her hold on his hair and shoulder and was clutching her hands underneath her breasts. “I’m sorry.”

She looked embarrassed, too. “Guess we should have taken that inside,” she whispered as the two men walked by, casting curious looks at them. Bucky was sure he and Darcy looked guilty. They were both still soaked from the rain and it was probably pretty obvious that they’d been kissing if his lips looked anything like her perfectly pink, swollen ones.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t use her to find that part of himself again, not if she didn’t know what she was getting into. Not if she didn’t really know all of him. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Uh, do _not_ apologize for any of that. Unless you’re apologizing for stopping and then… then I only accept your apology if you start again.” She gave him a tentative, almost shy, grin.

Bucky shook his head. “This… This is a mistake. I’m… sorry.” His stomach was churning like his insides were going to eat themselves. God, he wanted her so badly he couldn’t even breathe and anything between them was absolutely doomed. If she didn’t slink off in fear when she found out what he was capable of, then she’d not be able to handle him running off on missions with Sam.

“Bucky,” she said, reaching out a hand.

He stumbled back a step to avoid her touch. The hurt in her eyes at his avoidance made his heart ache. “I… can’t,” he whispered before taking off toward the stairs. She didn’t call after him or try to stop him, and Bucky wasn’t sure if that would have made him feel better or worse.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: I POSTED THE CHAPTER BEFORE THIS ONE LESS THAN 12 HOURS AGO. IF YOU HAVE NOT READ IT, I SUGGEST YOU GO BACK AND DO SO OR YOU'LL BE VERY CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT IS TRANSPIRING IN THIS CHAPTER.

> _”Your heartbeat woke me up this morning. Still got the taste of you on the tip of my tongue. So beautiful when you’re sleeping. May fall in love again if I stay too long.” - S.I.R. feat. Masego (Ooh Nah Nah)_

At first, she wanted to run into him. In fact, she wanted to hack into the system again and find where he was living. It had to be in the building or near it or she wouldn’t see him so often. Her pride was the only thing that prevented her from doing so. Well, her pride and the fact that she’d forgotten the steps to hack into the server. But mostly her pride because she wasn’t about to go crawling up to his door when he’d dropped her like a hot potato as soon as some of the guys he worked with walked by. If he didn’t want to be seen with her as more than his stupid friend, then whatever.

What hurt the most was that she hadn’t thought he could be that kind of person. She’d thought there was something real there—a connection that was more than just physical. Hell, nothing physical had happened even when they’d been alone in her bed. “He’s probably mixed up and confused about everything,” Jane had said. It had been Jane’s only advice after Darcy had spent a full thirty minutes going over what had transpired during the long weekend at her parents’ house and after dinner four days ago. If only dinner had led to her bed. Or floor or wall or kitchen table. Scratch that. The kitchen table couldn’t hold her all by herself and he definitely felt like he could go hard when he wanted. She’d felt him grinding into her against the doorframe that night so she had some idea. God, she needed to get a life and stop lusting after him because it wasn’t going to happen.

After deciding seeing him would only be awkward and dignity-stripping, she’d actively avoided him by sequestering herself in the lab with Jane when she wasn’t in her room. It took Darcy two days to realize she was being stupid. Bucky was the one who ran and she hadn’t seen him since. He was probably avoiding her harder than she was avoiding him. She’d never been so upset and so pissed off at once.

So, she stopped trying to hide and went about her daily life helping Jane. Jane wasn’t on her itinerary today, though. She had a meeting with Fury, five suits from D.C., Bruce Banner, and Wanda. Wanda looked uncomfortable, but it was probably because the guys from D.C. looked like they were scared shitless of her.

“Hey,” Darcy said, sitting down beside her when the meeting to discuss the budget for the facility was finished. “Don’t let those guys get to you. They’re probably just intimidated because they have tiny wieners.”

Wanda turned to look at her, eyes wide and mouth open in surprise. Darcy smiled and Wanda finally dissolved into laughter. “Thanks, Darcy. I needed that.”

“What are you doing here? Bruce didn’t tell me you were working on the new digs.”

The other woman sighed. “Sam was supposed to be here to give input into the training facility—what we need and all that. He and Bucky were called away on a mission two days ago.”

Darcy felt her stomach flip over at the mention of Bucky. Two days ago. So, he’d avoided her for two days and been gone two days. Whatever. She would have felt bad if he’d been gone for all four. Maybe she would have been able to blame the lack of contact on him being unavailable. But, no, he’d had two days to come find her and apologize for getting spooked when other people thought he was slumming it with _the girl from the labs_.

“This kind of thing isn’t really my… strong suit,” Wanda told her.

“Yeah, me neither,” Darcy agreed.

Wanda snorted. “Really? If Fury hadn’t been here, you would have been running this meeting. The way you pushed back on that guy about the timeline? Wow.”

Darcy shrugged. “He was being a jerk and trying to buy time. Government employees are the laziest. Believe me; I know. When I was in undergrad, I interned with the state of Virginia. You wouldn’t believe how slow everything moves. We have people who need a place to live and train and we don’t have time for that guy to drag his feet on paperwork.”

“See?” Wanda said. “You’re a pro.”

Darcy thought about it for a minute. “Well, I guess I am good at coordinating shit. I just thought it stopped at Pop-Tarts and plane tickets.”

“Obviously not.”

“Hmm,” Darcy said, drumming her fingers on the conference table. “You know, I _am_ pretty badass, right?”

Wanda laughed. “You are, actually.”

Later that day when Darcy saw Sam Wilson walking away from the jet on the landing pad, she had a moment of panic that Bucky would be behind him and she’d have to face the awkwardness that was sure to happen the first time she crossed his path after… whatever happened. But Bucky wasn’t there and Darcy was still riding high from her conversation with Wanda. She met Sam halfway between the jet and the building.

“How’d the mission go?”

“Good as can be expected, I guess. What happened a few weeks back with Thanos… It kinda put us on the map with some neighbors we didn’t know we had.”

“Yeah?” she asked, falling into step with him as they approached the building.

“Yeah. Remember the movie Men in Black?”

“With WIll Smith?”

Sam nodded. “So, pretty accurate on some things. Like, the cockroach guy. There are actually things out there that look like that.”

“What the fuck, dude?” She looked around. “Are they… friendly?”

“Well, no. Not at all, actually. Six of them had taken over an entire village in Cambodia. Half the people were dead by the time we got there.”

“How?”

“Uh, don’t ask,” Sam told her. “They were eating them.”

She shuddered. “Can we go back to being this galaxy’s best-kept secret?”

“Don’t think so,” Sam said with a sigh. “Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure? Bucky’s just fine in case you were checking up on him. Not a hair out of place on his head even though he took out three of those things on his own while the rest of us struggled with the other three.”

“Yeah, I’m not looking for Bucky,” she said, remembering why she’d marched out there to meet Sam in the first place. “I actually was looking for you so you can tell your buddy Bucky that he could only be so lucky to date me.”

Sam stopped walking. “What?”

“Look, I don’t know what kind of game he’s playing with me, but you can tell him that I don’t appreciate being treated like his dirty little secret. I’m better than that.”

Sam’s mouth was opening and closing, but nothing was coming out. Finally, he managed to say, “His what?”

“We made out in the hallway and then he literally dropped me when your little teammates sauntered by like he didn’t want to be seen in public with the lab girl. And you know what? I thought he was better than that. Stupid me.”

Her hands were on her hips and Darcy was running with her righteous indignation until Sam said, “Oh shit. _That’s_ why he was so fucked up on this mission. He almost got himself killed.”

“ _What_?” Darcy said, her voice suddenly shrill. “I thought you said there wasn’t a hair out of place on his head.” And she had also thought she didn’t care what state Bucky fucking Barnes was in. Obviously, she was lying to herself.

“Well, it wasn’t really like that. I mean, he went against orders. He went in alone. He could have been killed, but I don’t think he was ever in trouble. It was unlike him to do that. Also, he won’t say more than two words to me at a time. I should have known it was you.”

“Me?” Oh boy, that was even more shrill than her last question.

Sam started walking again. Darcy stumbled forward to catch up. “Yeah, you. He’s got you on his mind instead of the mission.”

“Oh, he definitely doesn’t have me on his mind. He avoided me for two days before he left on your stupid mission.”

Sam took off his fingerless gloves and tucked them in his back pocket. “Look, you and him need to talk. I’ll see if I can get him to show his face.”

“I don’t want to see his dumb face,” she snapped.

“Yeah, you do.” Sam paused when he got to the door. “Would you hear him out if he comes to talk to you?”

She lifted her chin up just the slightest bit. “Depends on what he has to say.”

“You gotta give him another chance, Darcy. I don’t think this is about what you think it’s about. He’s not ashamed of you, trust me.”

“Then what’s his problem?”

Sam pulled the door open and said, “He’s gotta tell you that himself. You gonna be home tonight?”

“What? Like, am I going to wait around for his ass? No thanks.”

“Like I said, this isn’t about you,” Sam told her. “Trust me on that one. He’s definitely not ashamed of getting caught. Just promise me you’ll hear him out if I can get him to come talk to you. And maybe think about telling him you saw his file. That would go a long way to resolving this.”

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “Whatever. There better be groveling.” The door shut and Darcy stood there on the sidewalk by herself, the sun was still high in the sky. “Groveling and finishing what he started,” she said under her breath. “Jerk.”

She pulled open the door and called after Sam. He was halfway down the hallway, but he turned around and said, “What?” He looked like he was fed up with everyone’s shit.

“Also, I heard you’re supposed to be the new Captain America, so why don’t you put on your big boy panties and start… I don’t know… doing the Captain America thing,” she yelled at him.

Sam’s eyes went wide. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“No. Man up, dude.”

“Kiss my ass, Lewis,” he said, half furious and half amused.

“I would if you’d get off it.”

“Oh, man,” Sam said. “You and him are perfect together. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

 

* * *

 

She didn’t actually expect Bucky to show. To prove to herself she didn’t care, she put on her pajamas—an oversized white T-shirt and a pair of black cotton shorts that left most of her legs bare. The temperature outside was still in the eighties and the building’s A/C unit was old and struggling. The itty bitty shorts had nothing to do with Bucky Barnes and whether he was going to show up on her doorstep or not.

She watched three episodes of a silly show on Netflix on her laptop in bed and decided that watching a fourth and staying up after one in the morning would mean she was just waiting for Bucky. When he didn’t show, she’d be disappointed and even more hurt. Darcy shut down her computer and put it on the nightstand. She wiggled around until she had the blanket pushed down to the foot of her bed and just the sheet laying over her body. As soon as she let her head fall back into the pillow, a knock at her door had her jerking upright again.

Her mind immediately went to Bucky before she decided it had to be Jane. She hadn’t seen Jane all day because her attention had been focused on the new facility and the paperwork Bruce had passed off to her right before the meeting with the suits. She got up and padded across the floor in her bare feet. When she opened the door, she fully expected to see Jane even though she begrudgingly hoped it was Bucky.

When she saw Bucky looking like he was being led to his own death, she felt her chest tighten. It was hard to be angry at him when he looked vulnerable like that. “Did Sam force you to come apologize for being a dick?” she asked.

“He said you thought I was ashamed to be seen with you,” Bucky said. She watched his throat contract as he swallowed before continuing with, “That ain’t true at all, doll. I’d be proud to be seen with you. I… I didn’t leave because of that.”

“So, you’re just playing with me then? Having fun?”

“No,” he replied, his voice more forceful than it usually was. “I’m not playing.” Bucky held up a folder he had clutched in his left hand. “I haven’t been honest with you.”

“Honest, how? Like, you have a wife and family or you secretly hated my mom’s cooking?”

Giving her a bittersweet smile, he said, “Neither. I think you need to know who I am before you decide you wanna do anything with me.” Bucky offered the folder to her.

“Who you are?” she asked, accepting it but not looking inside. “What do you mean? I know you’re James Barnes. I know you were friends with Steve Rogers and you were in the service and you got captured and Steve saved you after he got all beefy.”

“And?” he prompted.

She took a step back into her apartment and motioned for him to come in. When he hesitated, she said, “Come on, dude. I’m not going to strip my clothes off and jump on you.”

Bucky exhaled a soft, breathy laugh. “I wish you would.”

“Well, the night is young, so…” She looked down at the innocuous folder. “What is this? Is this about what happened after you fell from the train in the forties? I know about that, too. You were tortured and brainwashed and used as a super secret assassin by a fucked up terrorist organization. This is all kinda common knowledge. I mean, my dad knew all this and he’s an insurance salesman in a small town.”

He stepped inside and shut her door, but didn’t move from the little tiled square of the entry. “You need to know everything. I did bad things, Darcy.”

“So? You were loopy. Is _that_ what this is about? I thought Princess Shuri pulled all the garbage out of your head so you’re free from them.”

He leaned back against the door. “She did. But people treat me differently when they know what I’m capable of. I… I don’t want to… I can’t start something with you and watch you…” He pulled in a deep breath. “I don’t want you to see me under…” Bucky ran his hand roughly through his hair. He was in a T-shirt and sweatpants. He looked good. Really good. But he also looked really distressed.

“You don’t want me to date you without knowing everything?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve seen people distance themselves from me once they read my file. It hurts. Before you get too close, I want to give you the opportunity to… not.”

Darcy furrowed her brows and held up the manila folder. “Is this your file?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She flipped it open and looked at the dossier she’d seen in electronic form not too long ago. She’d never told him that she’d looked. The time had never been right and she didn’t want him to think she was spying on him or invading his privacy. “Ahh, fuck,” Darcy said, looking up at him. “I should have told you before now.”

He looked like she was about to crush him and it broke Darcy’s heart. “What?” he asked.

“I’ve already seen this, Bucky.”

“What?” he asked again.

Darcy sat down heavily on the edge of her bed and tossed the file onto the nightstand. “I’ve already seen your file. I… hacked into it a few days before we went to my parents’ house for the weekend. I didn’t know how to tell you because it was a crappy thing to do. I should have just trusted that you’d tell me about yourself when you were ready.”

“Wait,” Bucky said, taking two steps forward into her room, “you’ve already seen the entire file?” It wasn’t until then that she noticed his feet were bare. He’d come from his room somewhere in the building.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Bucky. I shouldn’t have done it, and I should have admitted it before now.”

He stopped only a couple of feet away from her. “You read it all?”

Looking up at him, Darcy nodded. “Every word. Did you think that would make me not like you or something?”

“I thought it would make you afraid of me.” He said it all on one exhale, his tone disbelieving.

“No fucking way, dude. I would trust you with my life. Don’t be silly.”

When he dropped to his knees in front of her, Darcy reached out to catch him. She ended up holding the elbow of his cybernetic arm as he inched closer until her knees were pressed into his stomach. “You knew all that the entire time we were in Maine? Everything I’ve done?”

“Aren’t you mad at me?” she asked, spreading her legs.

He took advantage and wedged his upper body between her knees, fisting the bedsheet on either side of her in his hands. “Not a damn bit,” he whispered. “Doll, I’m so sorry I left that night. It wasn’t… it wasn’t those guys walking by and catching us. It was…” He glanced over at the file on the nightstand.

“You actually thought I’d dump your fine ass if I knew you killed JFK while you were out of your gourd and being controlled by some assholes who kept you in line with electroshock treatments? Fuck that, dude. You’ve seriously underestimated your hotness.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a hug, her ass on the very edge of the bed while he kneeled in between her legs.

Darcy took his face in her hands and leaned back so she could look him in the eyes. “You also seriously underestimated how much I care about you.”

His eyelids fluttered closed before he bent his head and buried it between her tits while he hugged her even tighter. Darcy ran her fingers through his hair, petting his neck and his shoulders, too.

“Is this your slick way of getting your face between my boobs?” she asked.

Bucky looked up, his chin nestled right there in her cleavage. “Maybe?” he said, giving her a mischievous little smile.

“You okay now?” she whispered, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

“The only thing that could make me happier is you telling me that you forgive me for running off on you.”

Darcy snorted. “I should have told you about the file before now. If you forgive me, then I forgive you.”

“Ain’t nothing to forgive, doll. You were looking out for yourself by checking up on me.”

“Still, Bucky. I shouldn’t have—”

“I don’t care. I’m glad you looked. I’m glad you still…”

“Want you?” she asked.

He slipped his right hand underneath the hem of her shirt and let his fingertips rub the skin at the small of her back. “Do you?” he whispered.

“Uh, that’s a safe bet, hot stuff.” Having him there in front of her, looking up with adoration was a heady experience. “Do _you_ want _me_?

He placed an open-mouthed kiss on the swell of her breast that was exposed. “I don’t want anyone _but_ you.” His voice was a tender rumble against her sternum. Darcy cradled his face in her hands as he moved his head from left to right, using his chin to push down the neckline of the oversized shirt she was wearing. His wiry beard tickled the more sensitive areas, but it was his fingertips tracing patterns on the small of her back that made her shiver. Well, maybe that and the fact that he’d told her she was the one person he wanted.

“Why?” she whispered, pulling away and holding his face back far enough to see into his eyes.

He looked drunk, strung out and lost in what he was doing. “Why?” he repeated. “Why what?”

“Why me?”

His brows furrowed and some clarity seemed to leak back into his gaze. “How could it not be you? You’re beautiful and kind and smart and… I haven’t wanted to do this in so long, not until I met you.”

“Do what?” Man, this guy knew all the right things to say to make her feel like she was on top of the world.

He slid both hands underneath the back of her shirt and pulled her body into his. Tilting his chin up, he pressed a fluttering kiss to the hollow of her throat before licking her skin there. “This,” he whispered, moving his mouth down to her breasts again.

Darcy gasped when he found her left nipple and sucked on it through the fabric of her shirt. “Bucky,” she groaned, fisting her hands in his hair.

“Is this okay?” he asked, looking up at her, blue eyes wide and desperate.

“Uh, very fucking okay, actually. In fact, this is great. Been thinking about it for, oh, weeks.”

He chuckled and nuzzled her other breast, finding that nipple through her shirt as well. “Me too, doll.”

Bucky’s fingertips were moving up and down her spine as he twirled his tongue in a circle over her nipple. If only the damn shirt wasn’t in the way. “Wait,” she said, “weeks?”

“Mmm,” he agreed, preoccupied with trying to make her come without taking her clothes off.

Darcy made a frustrated noise deep in her throat as she rocked her hips. There was absolutely no friction there between her legs and it made her throb with anticipation and need. “Bucky, please.”

He pulled back and looked up at her again. “You’re gonna have to be patient with me. I’m rusty. Remember that terrible first kiss?”

“It wasn’t terrible, and you’re not as rusty as you think.”

“Can I take this off? Can I see you?” He tugged on the back of her shirt.

“Only if you take yours off first.”

He smiled and it was so beautiful and so genuine that it took her breath away. Before she could pull in oxygen, he’d sat back on his heels and yanked his shirt over his head. It went sailing off behind him toward the door, and suddenly, she had a half-naked Bucky Barnes reaching for her shirt. She wanted to be self-conscious about it, but she was at a level of arousal that negated most of her insecurities. It was easy to disregard that little voice in the back of her head that questioned why a guy like _him_ wanted her when he looked at her like _that_. It was like he’d never seen anything he wanted more.

Lifting her arms, Darcy let him pull the T-shirt off her. She barely had time to look at him before he insinuated himself between her spread legs and dipped his head, finding one of her nipples with his mouth. The tip of his tongue circled it, tracing her areola before he ripped a gasp from her when he sucked her nipple into his mouth. “Bucky…” she moaned.

“Tell me what to do to make you feel good. I forget how this goes,” he whispered against her skin as he moved his mouth to the other nipple.

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh at his request as she buried her fingers in his hair again. “That’s so… so ridiculous.”

“What? I haven’t done this for decades. Tell me what I’m doing wrong,” he said, lips brushing over her sternum before he moved his mouth to her other breast.

“Fuck, she said, tilting her hips up. “Nothing. You’re doing noth—-nothing wrong.”

“Tell me what you want, doll,” he whispered before licking her nipple with the flat of his tongue.

She hooked a leg around him, digging a heel into the middle of his back. “You,” she said.

“Can I do what I want?” he asked, pulling back to look up at her.

Darcy skimmed her hands over his shoulders, feeling the difference between the flesh one and the vibranium one. “What do you have in mind?”

He licked his lips, the act almost obscene. “I wanna taste you.”

Could you pass out from being too aroused? Or maybe from anticipation? “Bucky, I…”

“Too much?” he asked, dropping his gaze and softening his hands on her back, cradling her instead of crushing her against his body.

Laughing softly and feeling just a little crazy, she said, “No, not too much. You can… do whatever… I trust you.”

“I wanna make you feel good.”

“Everything you do makes me feel good. _Everything_. I want you to feel good, too, though.”

His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide in the soft lighting of her bedroom. “Lie back,” he said, putting his right hand on her sternum and gently urging her to relax and fall back on the mattress.

She did as he’d asked, her breathing nothing more than shallow gasps of air. She felt his hands trail up along her calves from her feet just an inch off the floor to the tender backs of her knees and where they bent over the edge of the mattress. He lingered there and Darcy lifted her head to let him off the hook if he was having second thoughts. Before she could get a word out, he moved those capable hands confidently over her thighs and around to hook into the waistband of her shorts where they stretched over the widest part of her hips.

“Lift up,” he told her.

Arching her body, she managed to shift enough. Bucky slid her shorts and panties down to her knees before sitting back on his heels so he could pull them the rest of the way off. She pressed her legs together from the knees up, feeling exposed and suddenly shy.

It was his gentle right hand on the outside of her thigh that made Darcy lift her head again. He looked wrecked, like he was already halfway out of his mind and they hadn’t even done much. Hell, she’d gone further than this with her first boyfriend in high school. “Can I…” He didn’t finish his question, but he didn’t need to. “Please,” he whispered.

She gave him a nervous, breathy laugh. “I want you so fucking bad,” Darcy admitted. “I’m just feeling a little… self-conscious. I’m naked and you’re… you.”

“Me?”

“Out of my league and super important and I’m just… whatever.”

“You’re everything,” he told her. He made it sound like it was a fact of life and she was just being silly. Darcy squealed as he hooked his hands in the crook of her knees and pulled her forward until her ass was almost hanging off the bed. Before she’d had a chance to process what he’d done, Bucky had her legs hooked over either of his shoulders and he was looking at the space between her legs like he hadn’t had a good meal in years.

His beard tickled her sensitive inner thighs as he trailed kisses and exhaled hot breaths of air over the skin there. He skipped her center and dragged his tongue up the inside of her other thigh. “Bucky, please,” she begged, voice almost breaking on the plea.

“It’s coming back to me,” he admitted, smiling up at her when she raised her head so she could watch him.

“Uh, I don’t think you ever forgot.”

Her response made him chuckle as he dipped his head and opened his mouth over her slit. Darcy’s stomach muscles jumped when she felt the tip of his tongue part her folds and slide up to nestle in the hood of flesh around her clit. When he nudged that bundle of nerves before circling it with his tongue, she groaned and dug her heels into his back. Using the leverage that afforded, she lifted her hips off the bed.

Bucky’s laugh was exhilarated, but he didn’t take his lips off her pussy. Instead, he put his left hand on her abdomen to hold her still so he could work her the way he wanted without Darcy’s impatient gyrations. The sight of his head between her legs and his cybernetic hand splayed over her stomach was more erotic than she’d ever imagined it could be.

He was a quick study, listening to her breathing and feeling the way she strained to push up against his mouth when he hit an especially sensitive spot that curled her toes. “Fuck, you’re so good at this,” she said, arching her back and curling her right hand over his left.

Bucky looked up and the sight of his cybernetic hand on her body and her fingers clutched around it seemed to pull his attention away from coaxing an orgasm out of her. She moaned in frustration, shifting her hips. She felt so wanton and greedy and desperate. “I wanna make you come. Tell me how,” he whispered, eyes still on the way his hand looked against her skin.

“Just… keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. His right hand was on her hip, fingertips digging into her flesh, but in a pleasurable way. “Touch me,” she said, “please.” Darcy used her hand on his to guide Bucky’s left hand down between her legs. She watched his face as she pushed both their index fingers between the lips of her pussy. When she shifted her hips and pushed his finger a little deeper inside, his mouth opened.

“Fuck, doll. You like that?” His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a growl.

“Yeah,” she grunted.

He didn’t need more than that to take over, turning his hand and switching fingers. Darcy’s eyes rolled back in her head as he sank his middle finger all the way in to the third knuckle. As he pulled it out, Bucky laved her clit with his tongue. At first, he was careful, slow, reverential with the way he entered her. By the time she was rolling her head back and forth on the mattress and begging him not to stop, by the time she was begging him to please please please make her come, he was using two fingers to fuck her more roughly. It was just the friction she needed to come apart when he sucked her clit between his lips and rolled his tongue in a circle around it.

“Ahh, Bucky!” she called out, every muscle in her body tensing as her pussy pulsed around his vibranium fingers, waves of pleasure rippling out from her center and into her legs and abdomen. When she came down from the high of her orgasm, she could see her white ceiling and the vague rise and fall of her tits in her periphery.

Darcy gasped as he pulled his fingers out of her. When she looked down her body at him, he caught her gaze and inserted both fingers into his mouth, sucking her juices off them. He looked dangerous, like he was thinking about tying her up to her bed and wringing as many orgasms out of her as he could. She was definitely on board with that plan.

“I can’t move,” she confessed. Bucky’s laughter was just a rumble in his chest. He brushed the fingertips of his right hand up the outside of her thigh until he reached where her leg hooked over his shoulder.

“No complaints?” he asked, the corners of his mouth lifted in a subtle grin.

“You _know_ I don’t have a single damn complaint. Well, other than that you’re not in bed with me.”

He shifted and slowly removed her legs from his shoulders. “Yeah?” he asked, sitting back and using a hand on the bed to push himself up to his feet.

Suddenly, she felt self-conscious about the way she was sprawled out, halfway on the bed, toes just barely grazing the floor. He could see all of her and he was so perfect, even with that intimidating arm attached at his left shoulder. Or maybe that was part of what made him so gorgeous. His eyes swept down her body and then settled on her face again. “Yeah,” she finally answered. “Do you want to…” With absolutely no grace, she struggled to sit up and scoot back in the bed. Instead of finishing her question about whether he’d like to join her, she groaned and said, “In my head, I was able to wiggle all the way into bed in a much sexier way.”

Bucky chuckled and settled a knee between her spread legs. “You look very sexy,” he told her. Actually, _he_ looked very sexy with those loose sweatpants and his erection tenting out the front. His hair was wild and tangled from her hands and his eyes were focused on her as if nothing else existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this finished and thought I'd be a nice author and give it to everyone early. The final chapter will be up in a few hours at my usual update time tomorrow. I'm in the Eastern time zone in the US for those of you who are far from me.
> 
> Thank you to all you lovely readers who have commented along the way. I'll continue this happy ending tomorrow. No strife, no sadness. Just sex. And more sex with a very eager to learn Bucky Barnes. He founds out it IS like riding a bike after all.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted Chapter 15 and Chapter 16 approximately within the past 24 hours. If you haven't read anything since then, I suggest you go back and read them before proceeding.

 

> _”Not really sure how to feel about it. Something in the way you move makes me feel like I can’t live without you and it takes me all the way. I want you to stay.” - Cat Power (Stay)_

“I’m blaming you for my lack of coordination. My legs still feel like jelly.”

“Mmm, good,” he said, leaning down and sliding his arms underneath her. Darcy grabbed his shoulders as he gently lifted her just enough to settle her down into the middle of the mattress. He stayed there, hovering over her, knees planted between her legs and hands now on the mattress to either side of her head, holding his upper body up. “Is this allowed?” he asked.

“You don’t have to ask. You know it is,” she whispered.

He smiled and bent down to press a soft kiss to her jawline. Darcy looped one of her arms around his neck to hold him close while her other hand moved down to the waistband of his pants.

“Mmm, mmm,” he hummed against her neck as he tilted his hips so she couldn’t reach his cock.

She felt a wave of disappointment tinged with embarrassment. “Why?”

“It’s been too long and… I want you too much. If you touch me, I’ll come and…”

“That’s the point,” she told him, reaching again. Bucky’s grabbed her wrist with his left hand. “Bucky, please.”

“I don’t want this to be over so fast, doll,” he whispered in her ear. The way he kissed along her jawline made Darcy shiver, but the way he kissed her mouth with his lips parted and his tongue seeking hers made her moan. For a moment, it felt like he must have more than two hands because they were everywhere—pinching her pebbled nipples and caressing and rubbing. She gasped into his mouth when he slipped his fingers into her slit again. “Wanted to feel you with my other hand,” he told her, brushing the tip of his nose back and forth over hers.

Darcy giggled and let her own hands map the contours of his arms—the muscles on his right and the unyielding prosthetic on his left. “I need you to take your pants off,” she said, hooking a leg over his hip and pulling his lower body into the cradle of her thighs.

Reaching back, Bucky grabbed her ankle and removed her leg so he could shimmy out of the sweatpants, shifting and lifting up until they were tossed across the floor and he was kneeling between her legs looking like a god.

“Oh, wow,” she said, following the muscles of his abs all the way down to the V that ended in his cock.

“Doll, you’re killing me,” he groaned, taking himself in his hand.

She shifted her gaze up to his face. “What’d I do?”

“You licked your lips like you had something in mind.”

She laughed. “Oh, I definitely have something in mind.”

“Me, too,” he said, lowering himself over her body.

Darcy wrapped her arms around his neck and grabbed a fist of his hair in one hand. She used the leverage to guide his mouth to hers so she could kiss him. When they broke it off to breathe, she said, “I hope the something you have in minds involves you inside me.”

He dropped his face to her neck right where it flared out into her shoulder. “I’m not going to last long,” Bucky admitted.

“So? I _need_ you,” she whispered in his ear. “This isn’t a one-time deal, right?”

“God, no,” he told her, sounding horrified at the thought. “Unless… is that…is that what you...”

“Fuck no, that isn’t what I want. You can impress me with your stamina next time. This time I just need to feel you. Please, Bucky.” She hooked her leg over his hip again and dug her heel into his perfectly shaped, perfectly firm ass.

With one hand pressed into the mattress beside her head to hold himself up and the other wrapped around his erection, Bucky shifted his hips and lined himself up. All she could see was his bowed head with all that wild hair she’d messed up with her fingers. “This feels like a dream,” he whispered, rubbing the head of his cock up and down her opening.

“Stop teasing,” she told him, lifting her hips up by using the leverage her leg around his hip gave her.

“I’m doing okay, right?” he asked, looking up into her face.

She was going to make some wisecrack, but the vulnerability in his eyes stayed her tongue. Instead, she placed her hands on either side of his face and said, “You’re doing the best.”

“It’s been a long time since…”

“I wouldn’t know it. Ten out of ten, Bucky. I’m so fucking serious. Now, _please_. I need y—” She gasped and cut off her request when he flexed his hips and slipped inside her. It took a couple of strokes for her body to adjust and accommodate his entire length. Once he was fully seated in her, his left arm gave out and he dropped onto her. Darcy welcomed his weight and wrapped both legs around his hips, digging her heels into his ass. She shifted beneath him and ran her nails over his shoulders and down back. The prosthetic felt different, but it worked and looked just like an arm. He even shivered when her nails skated over the shoulder before she reached his back.

Bucky nuzzled his face against her neck, breathing hard and heavy. “Don’t move or I’ll…”

She rubbed his back, neck, shoulders, even down his upper arms. “You feel so good,” Darcy whispered.

“You feel better. Like fucking heaven. I just need… a second. Just to… just give me… to…”

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s been a while for me, too. Catch your breath. I’m not complaining. I mean, I’m good with lying here all day if that’s what you need.”

Bucky pressed his forehead to hers and smiled down at her. “You feel so perfect.”

She moved one of her hands to push his hair out of his face so she could see him better. “So do you, Bucky.” She tightened the muscles in her pelvic floor and said, “I wanna feel you come for me,” before tilting her chin up to kiss his mouth.

Bucky groaned, closing his eyes right before their lips met. She slipped her tongue between his lips. For a moment, he seemed overwhelmed and uncoordinated. In the next moment, he recovered and thrust his tongue into her mouth in concert with the way he was thrusting his cock into her. With each snap of his hips, he hit every spot that made her toes curl and her eyes roll back in her head.

“So close, doll. So. Fucking. Close.” His breath was hot on her face, his wet lips brushing over hers.

“Come,” she demanded. “Bucky, please…” She needed to feel him let go. She wanted to catch him when he did.

He growled a fraction of a second before his entire body tensed, his already shallow, quick thrusts becoming even shorter and irregular. “Dar-cy,” he said through clenched teeth, breaking up the syllables of her name. She could feel him pulse inside her, emptying himself. She squeezed the back of his neck and pressed a soft kiss to his lips after he exhaled a sharp breath and let his body weight sag onto her a bit more than it had before.

“You okay?” she asked.

He moved to roll off her, but she held him in place with her legs around his waist and her arms looped over his neck. “I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered.

His apology made Darcy giggle. “Are you serious right now? Sorry for what?”

“Coming so fast. Crushing you with my weight.” He tried to get away again, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Best sex I’ve had in, like, forever, so you can take your apology and shove it.” Darcy kissed his lips again.

This time he kissed her back. “I’ll make it up to you next time.”

“I can’t wait.” This time when he tried to roll off her, she let him go.

He rested on his back for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. “Wow,” he finally said, turning his head to look at her.

Darcy had rolled onto her side and propped her head in her hand, elbow digging into the mattress. “Yeah?” she asked, grinning.

“Yeah.”

She touched the center of his chest with the tip of her index finger before running it down to his belly button. His cock was resting against his thigh. Darcy wanted to grab it, feel the weight of it in her hand, but she didn’t want to get too aggressive with him. He’d made it clear he hadn’t slept with anyone in a very long time. “Do you wanna stay here… with me… tonight?” she asked, nervous to hear the answer.

Bucky closed his eyes before inhaling and exhaling a big breath. “Yes. I’d love that.” When he opened his eyes, he looked like she’d given him the present he’d always wanted and never gotten.

 

* * *

 

He was sound asleep on his back when she woke up to birds chirping outside. The sun was peeking in through the sheer curtains. His right arm was wrapped around her shoulders and holding her against his body, her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest. She could feel each of his slow, steady breaths. She could also see the way the sheet they were under was tented up.

Smiling to herself, she hitched her leg up a bit where she’d thrown it over his thigh. Yep, her knee bumped up against his very hard erection. He didn’t wake, though. Carefully, she flipped the sheet to the side and slipped out of his grasp to maneuver until she was kneeling, straddling one of his legs. He was gorgeous, even in sleep. His skin was almost golden from exposure to the sun, maybe from his days on that farm in Wakanda. His muscles were well-defined, but not bulky. His eyelashes were dark against his face, and his hair was partially fanned out over the pillow and partially trapped beneath his shoulder.

Darcy leaned forward, one hand bracing herself and the other wrapping around the base of his cock. He shifted but didn’t wake, so she dipped down and took the head of his cock in her mouth. This time he tensed and moaned deep in his throat. Darcy took a little more of him before sucking as she let him slide out of her mouth.

“Doll,” he said, reaching down to touch her hair with his right hand. “What are you doing?” His eyes looked sleepy and hazy.

“Trying to make you feel good. Is it working?” She said, pumping him in her fist.

Bucky blinked and shifted his body when he realized exactly what was happening as the sleep faded away. “Sweetheart, you’re… gonna kill me.”

She opened her mouth and guided him between her lips. This time she tried to suppress her gag reflex as she took as much of his length as she could.

“Darcy.” He all but grunted her name. “You’re—it’s too much. I’m gonna come.”

“Come,” she told him, pulling away just long enough to say the word.

He growled in frustration and grabbed her arm, breaking her hold on him and flipping her over onto her back. He slid between her legs like that’s where he’d always belonged. “I wanna be inside you when I do,” he said as he reached down, lined himself up, and entered her in one smooth stroke that took her breath away. When he heard her gasp, panic seeped into his expression. “Did I hurt you, doll?”

She wiggled beneath him and gave a breathy laugh. “Fuck, no. You feel so good. Please, keep going, Bucky.”

He moved, tentatively at first, and then falling into a rhythm. It was fast enough that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath and just slow enough that she found herself teetering on the edge of an orgasm. He’d been so worried about his lack of stamina the previous night that the bastard was making up for it now. She wanted him to let loose, lose control, go harder. He was a fucking machine, though, keeping up that pace that brought her to the edge but never pushed her over.

“Bucky, please, I need…”

“What do you need, doll?”

“To come,” she said.

He dipped his head down and kissed her neck and jaw before he brushed his lips over hers. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered into her mouth when she opened to tease him with her tongue.

“Wanna come for you,” she whispered back, bearing down on him.

Bucky groaned and his rhythm faltered. Laughing, he said, “You’re not playing fair.”

“Uh huh,” Darcy replied before she kissed him. It was filthy—all tongues and teeth. He nipped at her lower lip as he picked up the pace. “Fuck, Bucky. You’re driving me insane.”

His chuckle was deep and satisfied. “Yeah? Just making up for being a little too quick with you last night.” He rolled his hips and the angle made the muscles in her stomach jump with a shock of pleasure.

“Fuck,” she muttered, “don’t stop.”

“Yes, ma’am. He thrust a bit more forcefully, grinding down when he bottomed out in her. “I’m close,” Bucky admitted. “So close.”

Darcy arched her back. “Me too. Bucky, please.”

“You know, I could get used to hearing you beg,” he whispered in her ear, body draped over hers as he sped up. The angle was rubbing her clit. “Tell me how.”

She didn’t need to ask what he meant. He wanted her to tell him what she needed to get off. Darcy reached up and pulled his left hand out of her hair and guided it down her body. Bucky took detours, squeezing a breast, tracing the curve of her hip. Finally, when he lifted up just enough to squeeze his hand between their bodies, he brushed her clit with the tip of his vibranium finger. She felt him give another trust, the friction of his cock filling her up making her muscles tighten. He pinched her clit lightly between her forefinger and thumb. The unexpected sensation was overwhelming and Darcy cried out as she came, clutching at him and bucking up off the mattress. The frantic clenching of her muscles as her pussy tried to pull him deeper must have sent Bucky over the edge, too. With a grunt of pleasure, he emptied himself inside her in uneven thrusts.

While she waited for him to recover, Darcy lazily played with his hair, running her nails over his scalp and down the back of his neck. She must have hit a sensitive spot because he shuddered and laughed softly. Instead of pulling away from her, he wrapped his arms around Darcy and rolled them both so she was spread on top of him.

“Morning,” he whispered, brushing his lips over her chin.

“I couldn’t help myself,” she admitted. “You looked too tasty.”

This made him laugh again. The sound was like a drug to her. She needed to hear it more often. “I ain’t complaining,” Bucky assured her. “You okay?”

She wiggled and let her legs fall to either side of his narrow waist. “Never better. I just woke up to the sexiest guy ever in my bed and he gave me the second mind-blowing orgasm in, like, less than ten hours. Life is really fucking good.”

“You got plans today?”

Darcy wanted to say no, but she did have a meeting with Bruce and a contractor. “Boo,” she whispered, hiding her face against his chest. “Yeah, I have a meeting at eleven. What time is it?”

He looked at the clock on her nightstand. “Fifteen til ten.” A swat of his hand against her bare ass made Darcy squeal. “Better get moving if you don’t want to be late.”

“I don’t wanna go. Wanna stay here in bed with you.”

He soothed the cheek he’d playfully smacked with his palm and said, “Me, too, sweetheart.”

“Take a shower with me before we have to go out and do responsible things,” she told him.

With no hesitation whatsoever, he said, “Okay.”

“You’re easy,” she said, moving to roll off him. Bucky’s arms prevented her from doing so when they wrapped around her. Instead of rolling to the side, she used her hands on his chest to push herself up until she was kneeling, straddling his hips.

His hands went to her breasts. “Why wouldn’t I be easy when it involves spending more time with you?”

“Oh, boy, you don’t know what these things you say do to a girl,” she told him as she arched her back to press herself more firmly into his gentle hands.

Chuckling, Bucky said, “I hope they make you feel as good as you make me feel.”

“Probably better,” Darcy replied.

“Okay, shower. I’m going to make you late.” Bucky released her, and Darcy struggled to get her limbs to work in a coordinated fashion so she could get out of the bed.

Once she was on her feet, she realized she was completely naked in an upright—possibly unflattering—position with the hottest guy around. Granted, the light in the room was still dim, but he was a super soldier, after all. Darcy turned her back to him. Before any real discomfort could settle in, Bucky was off the bed and wrapping his arms around her, walking them around the bed toward her tiny bathroom.

“What are you doing tonight?” he whispered in her ear.

Darcy shivered at the sensation and flipped the bathroom light on. “Uh, hopefully, I’m experiencing a repeat of last night.”

“I’ll do better,” he promised.

She turned around and slid her arms over his shoulders. Bucky’s hands went to her hips, pulling her body flush with his. “It couldn’t have been better, Bucky. A plus, nothing to improve upon.” With that said, she pressed her mouth to his. The tender kiss quickly morphed into something more desperate and wanton. By the time she gasped for breath, she was primed for another go with him.

“Oh, I can make it better,” he promised. “I’ll bring takeout and come over earlier.”

“Yeah? More time _does_ sound better because it means more you.”

He smiled and gave her a quick kiss on the lips before saying, “You don’t know what these things you say do to a guy.”

She rolled her eyes at the way he’d thrown her owns words from a minute before back at her, but she couldn’t keep the grin off her face. “Obviously, they turn him on if what I’m feeling against my stomach is any indication.”

Bucky used his grip on her hips to turn her around. A light smack on her ass sent her forward a step. “Don’t sass me. We need to get moving or you’ll be late.”

“I’m not going to some grand ball. I can be ready in fifteen, twenty minutes,” she said, turning on the water and holding her hand beneath the stream. Once it was hot enough, she stepped inside. Bucky waited for her to wet her hair before he followed and pulled the curtain closed.

He grabbed the soap and lathered her up. The contrast between his two hands felt oddly erotic as he rubbed them up and down her body before turning her around and shampooing her hair.

“Mmm, I could get used to this,” she said, leaning back into his chest as he massaged her scalp.

“Good,” he whispered in her ear before sweeping her soapy hair to the side and kissing her neck and collarbone. “Because I don’t intend on going anywhere. Now rinse.”

She wiggled her ass against his groin, knowing she was teasing him. His cock was already hard again and pointing up and slightly out toward her. Bucky growled and grabbed her to switch places so she could rinse the shampoo out of her hair while he lathering his up.

“You know,” Darcy told him, “it’s funny you ever thought your past would scare me away. You’re like a wet dream come to life. I’d be crazy not to want you.” She reached up and helped him work the shampoo into the roots along his forehead.

“I think it’s more like you’re crazy to want me, but I’m not complaining, doll.”

She grabbed the conditioner, and they both finished up with the shower while she made suggestions on what he could get for dinner. “Surprise me,” she finally said when he reached around her to turn the water off.

Stepping out of the shower, she passed him a towel. Before she could reach for another to dry herself, he was running his over her shoulders and arms, down her stomach and legs. She looked down at his dripping wet hair as he knelt in front of her, naked and aroused. He patted the tops of her feet and then leaned forward, sliding his tongue between her legs and along her slit. The side of his tongue brushed against her clit and she felt a pulse of pleasure.

“Bucky!” she gasped, grabbing onto his shoulders.

He stood and quickly dried her hair. “You’re going to be late,” he told her before using the same towel to hastily dry his body, too.

“It’s, like, ten after ten. I have almost an hour to get downstairs.” She reached up and helped him dry his hair.

The towel hit the ground a moment later, and Bucky said, “Yeah, but I got plans and I just realized they can’t wait.”

“Plans?”

He dropped to his knees again and with a hand between her thighs, urged her to spread for him. “What are you…”

“You taste so fucking good,” he said, lapping at her opening. “I gotta do this before we leave.”

She leaned back against the wall and let him coax one of her legs over his shoulder so she was open to him. “Oh, fuck, that feels… amazing.”

He only hummed his response as he licked and sucked and eventually fucked her with two fingers of his right hand. The vibration of his moans and groans of pleasure as he ate her out brought Darcy to the breaking point. In what felt like record time, she was using her hands on his head to push his face into her pussy as the muscles there pulsed around his fingers buried deep inside her.

Bucky looked up at her with dark eyes while he licked them clean. Before she could say a word, he stood and threw her over his shoulder. “Buck—oof!” Darcy squealed as all the air left her when her abdomen hit the unyielding vibranium. She kicked her legs while he carried her to the bed.

As soon as she hit the mattress, he was on top of her and between her legs, lining his cock up. “You make me crazy,” he admitted.

“Ditto,” Darcy replied. “Please, Bucky.”

He slid home in one smooth motion. Every single time he entered her, she wanted to let her eyes roll back into her head at the pleasure of being filled so completely. “Fuck, doll, you… So… good. I can’t think straight.”

“Don’t think,” she said, wrapping her legs around him.

“Gonna make you late,” he replied, snapping his hips up into her.

“Write me a hall pass,” she told him. “Oh, fuck, _Bucky_ , don’t stop. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

“Never,” he agreed, pressing his forehead to hers. “So perfect. You feel so… perfect.”

Bucky scattered haphazard kisses over her nose and cheeks and jawline. His lips were soft, a gentle brush with warm exhalations as he kept up that steady pace. The muscles of his back flexed under her hand as he moved over her. Darcy slid her other hand into his hair and pulled him in for a forceful kiss. He gave as good as he got.

He was right; she was probably going to be late because after this she’d need a few minutes to figure out how to walk again. But there was nothing else she’d rather be doing than having really hot and heavy morning sex with the sexiest guy she’d ever laid her eyes on, especially when that guy was pretty much perfect in every way. From how he treated her like she was important in his life to all the little things he’d done to make her happy or support her. Guys didn’t do that kind of stuff for Darcy. She’d always cared more, pushed harder.

“I can’t believe this isn’t a dream,” he whispered when they pulled back to suck in breaths of air. He pushed her wet hair back from her face, never missing a stroke. It felt euphoric to feel like someone might want you as much as you wanted them. Bucky’s eyes seemed to mirror her own.

She tried to tell him how much he made her feel, how _good_ he made her feel, but she couldn’t seem to find the words. Darcy wanted to chalk it up to the tension building right there at the center of her pelvis as he thrust in and out, pushing and pulling her toward an orgasm. It wasn’t just that, though. She cared about him and knew he cared for her. It was overwhelming and scary to think she’d accidentally stumbled into something real, something that could break her heart. He would be worth it, though.

“Need you to come for me, doll,” he whispered in her ear. “Please.” With that said, Bucky licked her ear with his tongue, toying with the fleshy lobe.

His hot breath on her neck and the erotic way he was flicking her earlobe like he’d done with her clit last night brought her to the precipice. All she had to do was… Darcy arched her back and shoved a hand between them, finding her swollen clit with the pad of her middle finger.

“Come for me. Let me feel you, Darcy,” he told her, his voice nearly a growl. She looked up and locked gazes with him as she felt the wave of her orgasm sweep her away. The leg she’d lowered to the bed to give her hand access hooked back over his hip just as he grunted. His smooth strokes faltered as he emptied himself inside her for the second time that morning. He was as insatiable as she felt when she thought of touching him, feeling him against her.

He buried his face in the crook of her neck, breath ragged and body limp over hers. “So, we can’t do meetings before noon if you’re gonna be sleeping over,” she teased. “I won’t be able to resist this every morning.”

He gave a breathless laugh, pushing himself up so he wasn’t lying on her. “That’s probably for the best,” Bucky said, rolling onto his side. Darcy turned onto hers and faced him. Immediately, he reached out and pulled her body flush with his. It felt right and indescribably good to nuzzle her face into his chest and neck as he settled both arms around her body.

“What time is it?”

He shifted before returning to hold her close. “Ten thirty-nine.”

“Ten more minutes and I’ll get dressed and head downstairs,” she told him, kissing his sternum.

He sighed and insinuated a leg between hers so their bodies were tangled together in the most comfortable way possible. After several minutes of blissful silence, Bucky said, “You think this will work?”

“Sure.”

“My life is…”

“Complicated. I know,” she told him. “You’re worth it.”

He leaned back and urged her to look up at him with a finger on her chin. “I’m worth it?”

“Yeah. Didn’t we talk about that? How we all want someone who sees the good and the bad in us and thinks the good is more important. I made a pro and con list in my head. The pro list is way fucking longer.”

He chuckled, looking giddy. “When did you make this list?”

“When we were in Maine.”

Bucky tucked her hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. “Me, too.”

Raising her brows, she said, “What’s in my con column?”

“Not a damn thing,” he said with a smile.

“You wanna know what was in your con column?”

“Probably not, but I get the impression you’re going to tell me.”

Darcy lifted her chin and went in for a kiss. The sweet touch of lips turned into something more intense and heated. When she pulled back, she said, “It was just one thing—you going away and getting hurt or killed on a mission. But Sam said he has a girlfriend so I guess that kind of thing can work if you’re careful. Right?”

“Right.”

“And you don’t go off all half-cocked and take on big alien bugs on your own.”

He groaned. “Did Sam tell you about that?”

“Yep. Don’t do that or your girlfriend will be really fucking upset.”

Bucky kissed her nose. “Yes, ma’am.” After a short pause, he said, “What about everything else, though? All the other bad things?”

“What else?”

“My past.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Bucky hugged her tightly, pressing a lingering kiss on her lips.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Darcy said, “Can you help me find my panties so I can go to this godforsaken meeting? This day needs to get moving so I can get to the end of it and have takeout and hot sex with you.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Anything for you, doll.” Bucky’s eyes widened and he let go of her, rolling away. “Actually,” he said, “I have something other than your panties for you.”

She watched him walk across her room and grab his pants from the night before. He stood there in all his naked glory, the leg of the pants almost completely hiding his cock from her, while he searched one pocket and then the other. “What are you doing?” Darcy asked, pulling the sheet up to cover her stomach and chest.

Bucky crawled back into the bed and pulled the sheet away before he revealed what he had balled up in his hand. “I got you this, but you distracted me the night we went to dinner.”

The tip of the rose quartz stone touched the center of her chest as it swung back and forth from the silver chain it was affixed to. She searched her mind for why the necklace was so familiar. “The antique shop we went to with my parents,” she said out loud when she made the connection. “Wait, how did you get this?”

“I saw you looking at it. While you were talking to your dad, I bought it for you. ”

“Bucky, I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you like it?” he whispered, laying the cold silver chain on her chest and settling down beside her in the bed.

Darcy swallowed the emotion that was trying to choke her. “I love it. It’s perfect. _You’re_ perfect. No one has ever done something like this for me before.” She gathered the pendant and chain up in her hand, curling her fingers around it.

“Oh, sweetheart, someone should have been doing these things for you all along. But I’m glad I get to do them now,” he told her, tucking her hair behind her ear when she rolled over onto her side and pushed him onto his back.

Darcy dipped her head down and pressed a tender kiss to his lips. The way he cupped her face so carefully in his hands made her heart melt. When she pulled back to gaze down at him, the look in his eyes almost took her breath away. He looked _happy_ and she had some part in that. It made her feel like she was on top of the world. “You still owe me a pair of panties, not-so-fake-boyfriend.”

He chuckled and lifted his head to steal another kiss. “You could always go without since I intend on taking them off as soon as you get back here this evening.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Deal, but only if you go commando, too.”

Bucky almost choked on his laughter. “Deal,” he finally said, giving her a light swat on her ass. “Meet you back here at seven, no underwear.”

“Cancel your meetings tomorrow,” she added.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be at your service.” That cheeky little grin on his face was deadly. She wasn’t going to get out of the door in time for her meeting. Was post-orgasmic bliss a viable excuse for being late?

“You’re a fast learner, buddy,” she said.

“Great teacher,” he replied with a wink.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thank you [Bulmaveg Otaku](http://bulmavegotaku.tumblr.com/) and [chocolategate](https://chocolategate.tumblr.com/) for their services as most excellent betas. Also, thank you to [Lady Audiophile](https://ladyaudiophile.tumblr.com/) for giving the entire a look to make sure I wasn't screwing up and/or being inconsistent sinced I made some significant changes in a later draft. You ladies are the best.
> 
> If you'd like a playlist of the songs quoted at the beginning of each chapter, you can find one here on YouTube: <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2o_A-FR3X3AVPRFMzp2qUXYRL-xOjB7X>
> 
> I hope everyone reading this note enjoyed the fic. I appreciate your feedback (kudos, comments, messages, email, etc). I can be found on Tumblr and Instagram under the same name I use on AO3--anogete. If you'd like to send an email, I can be reached at anogete527@yahoo.com. I'd love to hear from you in whatever venue you'd like to talk to me. The warmth and enthusiasm of the MCU fandom have been so wonderful to behold and only makes me want to write more for you lovely folks.
> 
> I began work on my next project a couple of days ago. It is in the very early stages, but I'm excited to flesh the story out and dig into the writing. If it stays in the planned form, then it will be another fake relationship fic, but this time it will involve Bucky and Darcy in a marriage and be a canon-divergent alternate universe that takes place about two years after Civil War. No Thanos, no deaths. Just angsty Bucky trapped in a one-bedroom apartment with this crazy woman they told him he had to pretend to be married to. I promise I'll do it up right and address Bucky's friendships with people like Steve and Shuri and T'Challa. And, of course, I'll tackle the divide between Tony and Bucky. Or at least I'm going to try to. It can't be all kittens and puppies, folks. If you're interested in receiving updates as I write, you can pop over to Tumblr and look me up. I post sneak peeks of the work-in-progress about every 20,000 words or so.
> 
> I hope to see you soon. Probably sometime in August. Until then, you wonderful people!


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